Social Media Awareness in the Age of AI

So our topic social media awareness in the age of AI. I want to just start off with uh a message from the universal house of justice of the bahighs of the world. Right? And the universal house of justice is the administrative body that really uh provides support uh from an administrative and spiritual sense to the bahigh around the entire world and it was mentioned I serve on a national spiritual assembly. So the national spiritual assembly uh uh in layman's terms works on behalf of the universal house of justice to help with the administration in a specific country. So uh we being in the United States uh so the national spiritual assembly of the bahigh in the United States and then there's local spiritual assemblies and other administrative bodies that really support uh the efforts of trying to build a better world and build better communities. That's in essence what is what is happening in terms of this administration. But let's just read a little bit from a message from the 9th of October of 2015 just about 10 years ago. uh the universal house of justice said technological advancement is integral to the emergence of a global civilization. The internet is a manifestation of a development anticipated by the guardian of the Bahigh faith whose name is Shogi Affendi. And he was really there to make sure that administratively things were able to move forward from the divine teacher Baha who who first uh had this vision of what the Bahigh faith could do to help build better communities, right? Build a better world. So in describing the characteristics of a unified humanity, he foresaw that a mechanism that is shogi offendi of world intercommunication will be devised embracing the whole planet freed from national hindrances and restrictions and functioning with marvelous swiftness and perfect regularity. Yet learning to utilize the internet as we are learning in a manner conducive to material and spiritual progress is an immense challenge and we have lots of examples of challenges around using the internet and ways that folks are using the internet and probably not uh thinking about advancing communities and advancing society. But the same technology can be used in a way to advance the world to make a better world where we all have a chance at equity and equality and the dream that Dr. King talked about so many years ago in 1963. That dream can be the absolute vision for humanity. But it is up to all of us to make this happen. So some guiding questions I have that I will go through today is what is media? What is digital literacy? What is media literacy? What is social media? What is AI? And what is social media awareness? So let's start off with what is media. It is the primary means of mass communications are platforms such as broadcasting, publishing and the use of the internet. Media mediums include radio, this is traditional television is traditional newspapers, magazines, new media and social media. All of which we utilize on the internet. And it was it was uh sort of thought many years ago dating back to the 1970s that one day all of these traditional media forms will be able to be used in a device. Technology will figure out how those who are creating the technology will figure out how do we move all of this into devices and we all have them at our fingertips. They're in our phones, right? We can look at radio, television, newspapers, magazines. And when we talk about new media, we're talking about uh for example YouTube. Although YouTube has now connected itself in the social media realm uh to sort of keep up and to uh stay current, but it it is considered new media in terms of its functionality with the internet. So what is digital literacy and why is this important? It is the ability to find, evaluate, create and communicate information that requires cognitive and technical skills. So with this, it functions by finding those who have uh digital literacy, finding, consuming, creating and communicating or sharing digital content. So without you necessarily knowing these technical terms, many of us have already been doing that. For the students, I will say how many of you are in chat rooms? How many of you are on on Tik Tok or other forms of uh what we call social media? Any hands? Just one student? I'm surprised more. Okay. So, you are functioning in a in a pathway of digital literacy. However, the level to which your digital literacy is successful is a little bit of what we're going to talk about today. So, without you even knowing it, you are becoming digitally literate by being able to post content or engage with content and also your capacity in terms of understanding the media and how it functions with all of the media mediums that you use as outlets. So media literacy, let's dive into this a little bit more, is a set of competencies that enable us to interpret media, make media of our own, which we were just talking about, and recognize and engage with the social and political influence of media in everyday life. And as you increase your media literacy, you increase your savviness to understand what is going on when you are receiving information. Those who do not increase their media literacy could be caught into some very troubling spaces. And those who are creating media, who are wizards at creating media or professionals at creating media, understand in full capacity how this is functioning on the human brain, which we'll talk a little bit more about in just a few slides. Social media refers to websites and applications that enable users to create and share content, engage in social networking, and interact with one another online. And these platforms enable the creation of virtual communities where people can connect with friends and family and others. So popular examples some of which we talked about uh uh Tik Tok for example but Facebook which is actually becoming an older generation form of social media and I I say that not jokingly but it is actually true. The the the age is somewhere between 55 and 65 and up that are mostly using Facebook. If I ask my how many students are using Facebook in here? Okay, that's what I thought. Yeah. So students are not well we're on a Facebook group with our family. That's usually the answer that I get. How about Instagram? Okay. Reals or or Instagram in general or both? >> Both. Okay. How about X formerly Twitter? Okay. Few folks. Anyone, by the way, anyone else can raise their hand, too. It doesn't have to just be students. I'm just curious who's using these these platforms. What about Tik Tok? Okay. Somewhat balanced in here. All right. All right, Leverne. Okay. All right. We're we're balanced in here. All right. So, these are forms of social media that you're interacting with, but we we we really want to think about as we're engaging with this social media, how what are we experiencing not only as we're thinking through the things that we're engaging with, but what is our body experiencing? And so, we're going to dive into that a little bit closer. But let's talk about AI. We've This is the new subject. I I think I've been thinking about AI ever since I saw uh the first Terminator movie and you saw this guy who talks like this here, you know, right? Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? The first Terminator. That was a terrible impression, Arnold, but I'm Please bear with me, Arnold. Forgive me, wherever you are. All right. >> All right. >> I was all right. Okay. If the professor said I'm okay, then I'm going to go with that. All right. My My wife is a little bit harsher critic on my on my impressions. I've done some voice work. She's like, "That one, that one worked. That one didn't didn't work as well." All right. So, AI or artificial intelligence by definition is the capacity of computer systems to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence such as learning, reasoning, problem solving, and decision-making. And it works by using algorithms to learn data, recognize patterns, and make predict uh predictions, excuse me, or decisions, often with a high degree of autonomy. And AI is moving faster than we can ever have ever imagined. Any AI users in here? What are we using? >> Perplexity. >> Perplexity. What else? >> GBT. >> Chat GBT seems to be the one that's very popular. Any Gemini users in here? Yeah. >> Co-pilot. Yeah. So, AI has moved into the realm of and institutions of faculty, staff and administrators trying to figure out what is proper use of AI, how do we use it effectively? And also how do we uh work with students so that they're using AI uh effectively, right? Uh one one of them I I I think about uh is Grammarly. How is that being used? for example, or if we're going to use chat GPT, are we using it as an assistant or are we using it to write a paper? And how do we how do we have checks and balances on that? We're still figuring these things out, right? The software available to really totally check these things is working sometimes and sometimes it's not working. And so we we're having to figure out other ways to uh sort of sort through these things in in the institutional spaces. Also, how are administrators, faculty and staff using this technology? I I remember it was a couple years ago, a dean in a specific institution entire welcome message was written by AI. They didn't write any of it. And it was when it was found out, they c they came down pretty hard on that dean. But is there a better use of the AI as you are writing this message? Can the AI do certain things for you? For example, I have used the AI to say I use chat GPT for example. Just testing it out. Please highlight for me in here what are all the verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Please highlight them for me. Right? And then when you're writing at the mast's or doctoral level, uh you you want to sort of limit, for example, the the amount of adjectives that you use, you don't want to have lots of adjectives, right? You want the the focus to be more on the research that you may be paraphrasing from more so than you using all of these adjectives to try to uh advance the conversation on the research. So that that's one example of one of the ways I've been testing out the AI. I've also been testing it out to see if it could help me with scheduling like an assistant. That's another way of functional use that I'm thinking about AI and also with the team of folks really thinking about how are we going to engage students about the use of AI in terms of what they're working on and the different assignments and projects in the classroom. I won't go too far into that, but these are some of the things that are coming up as we think about the use of AI. How is AI becoming an assistant to the things that we're engaging with on a daily basis? How do we use it in a functional way just as you just explained to be an assistant versus using it to uh cheat a system in some way? So, how do we use it as an assistant versus using it to cheat? That's this is constantly what uh I'm thinking about in terms of the research. what are the different types of AI tools that we can uh create sort of spaces for faculty development or create spaces for staff development or create spaces for students to develop and really learn how to use AI in the most functional way as they're engaging with all of these platforms. Right? So let's talk about social media awareness uh for just a moment. It is the conscious understanding of the impact and implications of our actions on social media platforms. So it's you being consciously aware of how you are functioning on these social media platforms. I spend a lot of time doing research and observing how folks are engaging with social media, especially when there is a subject that has a headline. In the old days, this would be a newspaper headline to get your attention. But now, we see this on social media, right? Facebook, Instagram, etc., right? We see these headlines. Folks oftent times are moving so quickly they may not even read what's in the actual message and then they start commenting or they see short form visual media uh doc shorts or short videos and they start commenting. That has a lot to do also with our literacy and awareness of just what is going on. And some of this is happening chemically in the body and individuals are not even aware. So social media awareness involves being mindful of the content we consume, share and engage with. And in fact, one of the things that I'm working on right now is I'm try I'm working with a group called Shiny Gems, and they're based on the East Coast, but they have an entire educational uh sort of online uh series of classes and instruction and ways to work with students in K to 12 right now. And so trying to get into school districts and trying to get into the private schools, whatever it may be, uh to really work towards beginning the social media awareness and the literacy uh at an early age all the way up through high school. So by the time these students are in college, they have a higher level of literacy. This is really a push and hopefully uh at some point this will be nationwide that there will be a push to have more media literacy, digital literacy and awareness of just how all of this uh mass immersion of content is affecting us. How many of you know how much media content the average child about five or six to 12 years old is consuming? We want to take a guess how many hours per day. >> Five six. Let's up it 10 to 12 hours per day. Youth are receiving more content. The brain is trying to process more content now than we have in the last 5 to 10,000 years for someone in that in that age range and that's a lot to ask the human brain to do and without certain mechanisms of and protections there it can become quite consuming. So social media awareness is also uh beyond personal use. it is encompassing the broader societal effects of digital interactions. So I want to move and talk about these three uh subjects really quickly which is um misinformation, disinformation and malinformation. So malinformation is the false or inaccurate information in getting the facts excuse me misinformation is the false or inaccurate uh information getting the facts wrong. Disinformation is false information which is deliberately right intended to mislead intentionally misstating the facts. How many of you have seen things on these media platforms that do these things misinformation and disinformation giving you information that is not based in fact it is based in some facts that they are saying are fact but they not might not be facts. Here's another one that's I think might be the most dangerous of them all. Malinformation is the malicious use of genuine uh genuine factual information to cause harm. And unlike misinformation, which is unintentional or disinformation, which is completely false, malinformation takes a kernel of truth and manipulates it by removing context, exaggerating details or selective editing to mislead and deceive. And that is happening all the time in content whether we areware aware of this or not. And this is affecting our bodies. It is affecting our brains and is affecting our bodies. And this is why it is so important to increase your literacy around media and digital content because these three right here are being used by individuals who know they're deliberately doing the wrong thing to mislead individuals all the time and create problems. And what it also does is it does the very opposite of what I was talking about ear earlier or what this institution was founded on. Right? So building unity, building community, bringing people together when this happens, this is the answer to that and this we must be aware of and how we're engaging with content and how we're engaging with communities and society. So, as as we're coming to very shorten our time here, as users, we want to recognize personalization and be aware that AI algorithms tailor your feed based on your past behavior, which sort of can create filter bubbles or echo chambers where you are only exposed to similar viewpoints. So this is something to be aware of and one should manage your data and well-being which is being conscious of the personal data collected to personalize your experience and consider setting boundaries to maintain a healthy relationship with social media. So one should also participate in ethical practices to ensure brands uh use of AI content and messaging is respectful and inclusive and for society and one should focus on authenticity and trust as we are in a world with deep fakes and AI generated content. It's crucial to be transparent and tools and systems are emerging that provide information about the source and history of content to build trust. So I'm just going to skip through a few slides here because we're short on time. So I want to talk about the brain. The brain is an operating system. Think of your brain like a digital operating system, i.e. like an Apple product or an is operating system. And the reason I want you to think about that and I'm going to come back to this slide in a moment. Thank you so much. The first thing that happens in the human brain is called meaning matching. We talked about how AI is doing this but our but it's based off of what the human brain does. So in the human brain, it reviews its storage to identify, match, and make meaning of the information it's receiving. And this process allows us to understand and make sense of the world around us. So it is constantly doing this without you thinking about it. So it's matching to make sure that it can make sense as what you're seeing, what you're hearing, what your senses are experiencing. This is happening instantaneously. It also does this process called meaning construction which is how the brain actively creates understanding from sensory input and existing knowledge involving dynamic processes such as navigation, imagination and memory. So it will construct meaning to something if it does not have something in its memory bank from previous engagement. Here's the problem. Let's go back. Your brain is an operating system. It functions. We're going to use example like an iOS on a phone. That's the operating system of the iPhone for example. If you are using an iPhone from the year 2015 trying to get it to function with today, do you think it's going to function very well? Especially as they start updating it and starts slowing down. Right? There are some individuals in this world whose operating system, their brain is functioning in the past. It is not moving forward. and they're trying to engage with the world of today with an operating system of the past. We can go back a hundred years ago, for example, let's talk about the brain and what was considered okay. There were people who would see somebody like me and then do the same presentation, but they would dress up in what's called blackface. You ever seen that? So there might be somebody of European descent that puts on this black paint and these gloves and these big large lips and tries to make fun of how somebody like me looks and now was accepted as okay a 100 years ago. We're not talking about that long ago. What if somebody has that same mentality? Their operating system is functioning like that, but they're trying to engage with everything today. And there are individuals like that right now that need to update their operating system. They need to update their brain functionality and they need to understand that if we're going to build a better world, if we're going to build a better society, if we're going to have institutions that are inclusive and embracing of people from different environments to help strengthen the institutions to help strengthen the world, then we need to update our our operating system so that when your brain does meaning matching or it does meaning constructing, it is doing it off of an updated system. So if you have an updated phone, it will function better. So, we need to update our brains to function in a way that makes sense for where society is moving. So, I want to go back to this because this is something really important and I'll be coming to a close soon. Let's talk about dopamine. Any of you heard of this before? This is a big issue right now. Dopamine and the reward loop. Let's talk about that. Social media can trigger can trigger dopamine release in the brain's reward system, leading to pleasurable feelings and potentially contributing to addictive behaviors. This feel-good chemical is released when users receive likes, comments, or other forms of positive engagement, creating a cycle where individuals seek out these experiences to maintain those positive feelings. The fleeting nature of these rewards and the potential for negative feedback can also lead to anxiety, depression, and a desire to seek more stimulation constantly. What does the algorithms do? What do they do? The algorithms do when they see you start looking at content. They bring you in more of the similar type of content and you can go down a rabbit hole of that content and your brain is now functioning. Dopamine release is happening and you're experiencing certain things in your body and it can be like a drug and it lures you back in and the next thing you know you're having all of these things happening like taking drugs and alcohol into your system and if you are not aware of what's happening with your body this can be very dangerous and I think professors and administrators and staff members and parents Parents especially need to be aware that these are things that are happening inside the human body and we must be aware that it is important to increase literacy. And some may be going well how do you do that? The first thing that I'll say without even taking any type of training is to start teaching your technology to show you things that are more conducive to what is going to make your body feel good. Going down rabbit holes of looking at negativity is never going to be a pathway to success. And I'm going to even say this, don't spend a lot of time looking at partisan politics on social media. it's not going to lead because you've got so much disunityity in that space. You want to be careful. Don't spend a lot of time looking at things where negativity is at the forefront of what's being taught and what's being spoke to. Think about using your technological devices for good or for things that are uplifting or things that are encouraging. And the more you train the algorithms to do that, the more of that type of information is going to be fed to you in uh the feed. So, I know I was said I I was told I was given more uh time, but I'm just going to move ahead to the things that I think are really important as we come to a close. The algorithm analyzes metrics like likes, shares, comments, and saves to gauge user interaction. So, higher engagement boosts visibility and signals that your content is valuable. So, this is why I said what I just said. You need to teach the algorithm what you want to be uh exposed to in a more consistent manner. So know your audience and platform. Who is your target audience? Understand who you're trying to reach for those who are creating content or being exposed to it. Consider demographics, interests, and the type of content that resonates. So for those of you who are posting videos, these are things to consider. Those of you who are receiving it, you might want to consider this too. Who's the audience? Who are they trying to uh engage with in this specific platform? And is it doing it for good or is there a problem? For those crafting content, craft effective content, you want it to be clear, concise, and engaging in terms of its messages, whether in text, audio, or video that encourage positive interaction. So this includes the use of hashtags to increase the visibility of those who will view a post. And students, this is really important to understand. When you are posting, I want you to think about what you're posting. Especially for those of you who were thinking about having a job later, let me tell you something. What do you think the percentage of companies are that are looking at your social media today? >> 100. We're not quite there yet. It's about 86%. So, we're not far from it, right? So, what you are posting is also being a determinant factor in many of these companies as to will you be the next person chosen for a job and you might be the best person for that job, but just because of some post that you put up could affect you being able to move forward. So, it's really important to think about how you are crafting effective content. Now, you might be saying, "But professor, sometimes I just want to post something silly. Sometimes I just want to have fun." But I really want you to think about and deeply engage with how that's going to impact society and the communities that you're engaging with. If it's something that you think is going to create potentially a problem for some, you might want to think about not posting that, even if it feels like it's funny, right? So, that's something just to think about. So fact check and verify information before posting to avoid dis uh dissemination of misinformation. We talked about disinformation, malinformation. Transparency is essential. Be honest and authentic in your communication. Respect the privacy of individuals and protect sensitive information. So be cautious again of what you post. I'm going to conclude on this. Be mindful of your comments. It is of utmost importance to engage in a practice of forbearance unless your comment is adding to a space of unity and love. The divine teacher of the Bahigh faith, Bahulah said, "Show forbearance and benevolence and love to one another. Should anyone among you be incapable of grasping a certain truth or be striving to comprehend it, show forth when conversing with him or her or them a spirit of extreme kindliness and goodwill. Help him to see and recognize the truth without esteeming yourself to be in the least superior to him or to be possessed of greater endowments. So, here's what I'm going to take from that. Just because you know some information doesn't mean you have to spout it out. We don't have to to show up somebody just be, "Oh, no, no, that's not it. This is what it is." We don't have to do that. Sometimes you need to have a little forbearance. Read the room. Read what's happening on social media. We don't have to comment on everything. We don't have to be the loudest person in the room. The greatest advice ever given to me by an elder was be humble. Be humble in what you do and who you are. You're not bigger than anybody else in the room. And always remember that as you engage with content, as you're immersed in this world of AI and social media, these are just a few things I wanted to bring awareness to as we work to increase our media and digital literacy. These are some things I wanted to bring awareness to. I certainly don't have a semester to take you through all the steps, but I'm certainly happy to share my contact information with anyone who wants to learn more about awareness around the use of AI, the use of social media, and becoming more media literate, digital literate, and engaging with one another. And I only ask one thing of you all before you leave today. Be kind to your neighbor right next to you. be love. Thank you.