Thinking... a forgotten skill

   
      As I was reading through the book The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble To Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu I noticed how some of his points shined through on my own life. With the rise of social media, almost everybody is glued to their phones. Myself included, I wondered how much am I being affected by the adds we see every day. The problem with this question is there is really no way to answer. Because adds are just a suggestion  and we as the consumer have the free will to chose if we click on them or not how can we tell how bad we are getting affected. This can be used as an excuse for companies to plaster adds almost every where. As we do almost any everyday task we are bombarded with adds. If we think about doing something as simple watching a video or walking going to the store we are almost guaranteed to see  one ad. This leads up to my one question is thinking for yourself a forgotten skill?
      With the prevalence of adds today I believe that our society isn't as free thinking as we believe. This is because everything we see affects us, and companies can use this to influence our minds. Even if we  don't click on the add, after seeing the same add multiple times we can safely say that we know what that adds is about. This means that even that if we try to ignore the add, over time we will know the products contents or what that product does. This is great for companies because they can have a number of people know their product even if they people aren't generally interested.
      The same thing can be said about bigger issues, such as politics. This is where the use adds can be scary, in that the media can push their side of the story to sway people and get them to have certain beliefs. Although these media websites may be trying to do the right thing, they also are reliant on views due to the fact that their company is paid by views. This can lead to exaggerated and even false claims that can be the cause of civil unrest and violence. This can cause a split in society and cause animosity between people all over the world. It can also make people feel unsafe because of some of the generalizations the media puts out.
   In the end I believe that todays society doesn't think for itself enough. I think people should do their own research before believing in something that was told to them. In the end this is not my opinion  that matters, but its society as a whole to think for themselves.  

-Brenden Dy