Sun Flower Seed #12: Social Currency

In this weeks class we discussed a topic called social currency. Social currency is one of the most important parts of social media today. In the video titled Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health,  Bailey Parnell discusses what social currency is and the stresses that social media has on youth today. Parnell says that social currency is the likes we value that we get on a picture. We as individuals for thousands of years have always thrived off of others and now that we have it at the tip of our hands we love the attention. The likes we get from our friends, our friends's friends and complete strangers are like money to us and we are the product Parnell says. But how does that all relate to social media? Social media only works because of the mass of attention we give it. If we did not use social media and give it as much power as we do then it would simply have already washed away. Social media and social currency go hand in hand because social media is how we get our product out and social currency is how we profit from it. We get hyped on the likes and how people react from what we post which is exactly why individuals spend hours on it everyday.