Well I made it!

For my final blog post, I wanted to reflect on what I have learned about my own food consumption habits and what I view on social media/news sites. First and foremost, what news sites is presenting is then later on reflected on social media. In almost or all of the days that I monitored the media, what the news was showing, people were copying that on Instagram and Tumblr.

If the news story was about something negative, people on social media wrote on the same subject but distanced themselves from the negativity of it. For example, on a day when the stories were about rising food costs, social media users showed to the world that they were above that and not affected, and posted prices with expensive vegan smoothies and treats.

If the news articles were positive, people did not directly reference that article, they simply were posting the exact same thing. This shows the type of subconscious or conscious allowance of news in our world, so much so that it impacts what social media users show to the rest of the world.

It made my think about why do I eat how I eat. I am vegetarian, started because my Mother is, but continued now because I do not support eating meat. How much health information am I not aware that I am picking up on social media? I do use Instagram, however I do not use Tumblr. Yet a lot of what I see is different ‘health’ advice on social media, and the research shows that the more I see this, the more I alter what I eat and my health habits.

If policy-makers, educators, and parents want to truly teach the population to eat well and be healthy, they need to realize the impact of social media. Social media is not just impacting body image through the promotion of skinny bodies, it is also promoting: gluten-free, veganism, cayenne-shots, diabetes management, slow food, and food trends. This is all happening with not most people paying attention to it. When I first started this project, I thought I would be focusing on the stories of eating disorders, and then pictures of users reflecting that. However social media paints a picture of so much more than just eating disorders, it covers every realm of the food industry and health surrounding food. It is so crucial that moving forwards we pay attention to what we are viewing, and how it is impacting our diet. It is studied that 2/3’s of social media users manipulate their photos or lie about what is actually going on behind the photos, and this shows how maybe their information that they are putting out is not entirely truthful as well.

Thank you very much for reading along, and I hope that part of what I have studied makes you alter your food consumption, and your consumption of social media.

-Alyssa