The algorithm decides: regional Aussies connect with social media

Regional Australians use social media to connect with friends, family and their community but it’s not always positive.

Transcript

00:00I use Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube.

00:06I used to spend a lot more, I used to spend maybe like three hours a day across all of

00:11them and maybe three hours, three and a half if I include Snapchat, but I recently got

00:16like a little blocker site so now I spend like three and a half hours on the weekends.

00:20I try not to get swept up by what I call the brain rot.

00:24It's kind of hard when you live on a farm and you can't contact any of your friends.

00:30But I mainly use it to like get clients and stuff through my horse training business and

00:34to keep in touch with friends and sort of show them what I'm doing and yeah, communicate

00:38that way.

00:39I use social media when I'm talking or wanting to share photos and comments from my trips

00:46that I make.

00:47I enjoy sharing those with my friends and family.

00:50It's a great way to keep in touch with people.

00:52A lot of the girls on social media are models or is photoshopped, so teenage girls especially

00:57that see that, they look at themselves and go like, why am I different?

01:00Why do I look different?

01:01And their whole life starts to revolve around trying to look like those influencers that

01:06they look up to on social media.

01:07People often don't just move trends, they turn their backs on old trends.

01:12They're like, oh it's so ugly, why do we wear that?

01:14So it's like if you keep the old stuff, you're not just not with the trends, you're kind of,

01:19it's bad.

01:20A lot of social media platforms are really good at keeping you in and really locking

01:24you in a bunch of confirmation bias that you're hearing all the time and people validating

01:28you and connecting you with people that think similarly to you.

01:33Sometimes that's not always what's best for us.

01:35Possibly once or twice a week, I'll see videos pushing hyper-masculine messages, which are

01:41a bit out of touch with reality, I think.

01:45Yeah.

01:46I'm also searching for it because I want to see what I'm up against.

01:51So I see a lot of stuff that is backlash against feminism and saying that women are trying

02:00too hard.