Their are a lot of people that have mental illness but now inside our houses our minds are tense and running overtime the mental illness stakes are becoming higher and the chance of getting it are higher. and with the metal illness depression is also higher because the stress of the pandemic is mounting higher and higher with every day hundreds people die.
Mental illness is also caused by a lot of different thing.
Social media is untrustworthy. It is, at times, deceiving and misleading. Humans are the cause as well as the victims. People are very gullible. However, it is their job to see through deception.
There once was a group of Asian people who wanted to find jobs in England because the pay was high. However, they did not have the money to afford a plane. Instead, they decided to unlawfully ride the back of a grocery truck that is delivering to England. The trunk was very warm, and the people overheated to death. News broke out in the British news organization: “Chinese People Overheated in Grocery Truck” (I don’t know, something like this). Now the whole world knows that the people in the truck who died were “Chinese.” As it turns out, the police officers later identified the people as Vietnamese. However, the Chinese were seen as being crafty and dishonest.
Why is this? Why do people falsely accuse and just get away with it? How can this story even be believed? How do I even know if it is true?
Hear this other one. There once was a person who was driving, and he saw another person in front of him, pointing a rifle in front of him. The driver quickly backed up. At a safe distance, the driver picked up his phone, dialed 911, and the police came. The gun owner was arrested. Just like the other incident, news reporters came and reported this incident: “Gunner Threatens to Assault Driver.” But that is not the truth. The driver had tried to ram the gun owner before with his car. The gun carrier only pulled out his gun for self-defense.
What is the theme? Do not trust social media. As for the news reporters, they should not directly jump to conclusions before fully knowing and understanding the event. People must see through deception, and separate between truth or falsity. We have no information on if a certain piece of information is true or not. We need someone to check the facts. And as Sinan Aral says, “Who is checking the fact-checkers?” We can never be sure if something is true unless the results are successful. That is only obtained from your own experience. Once you’ve gained experience, you will be able to know the truth.
When it was reported that COVID-19 was in the U.S., everything was put on hold. Schools closed and businesses were shut down. Everyone had to stay home and wait for the storm to pass. The news was filled with increasing numbers of cases and deaths. Experts predicted and every day people knew that it would damage our mental health. But because we did not measure peoples’ mental health, we did not know how much damage it would do, or understand why some groups of people are suffering more.
After surveying people about their mental health, the results were even worse than expected. Compared to 2018, participants were eight times as likely to have tested positive for mental illnesses. But some people are suffering more than others. Young adults, ages 18-44, were the most affected. This might be because younger adults were more likely to lose their jobs and because they were already struggling with mental health issues. Parents were also affected a lot especially because their kids are cooped in with them. It is hard to find time to manage your kids as well as get your work done.
There are also other examples that our mental health is suffering like how there are more mental health hotlines. Because this pandemic is damaging our mental health, we should be prepared for when people need mental help. This also shows how big of an impact COVID-19 has on us, and how many people of suffering from it.
Everybody is a little bit selfish inside. Though we may not like to admit it, behind every action there is intent for self-gain. For example, someone could give 1000 dollars to a homeless man. That may help the man immensely, but people would look at that someone as a hero. In the story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” by James Thurber, we can see this bit of selfishness inside the main character, Walter Mitty.
When Mr. Mitty and his wife were driving into town to get to his wife’s hair appointment, he imagined himself to be the commander on a navy ship. Though his wife eventually snaps him out of his moment of fantasy, Walter Mitty, imagined himself to be a great commander leading his crew through a hurricane. Despite the crew’s doubts, Mitty continued to act like a heroic commander.
Mr. Mitty’s next moment of fantasy was when he drove past a hospital. Then, Mitty imagines himself to be a world renowned surgeon that was tending to a famous millionaire, Wellington McMillan. Dr. Renshaw, a doctor that Mrs. Mitty recommended Mr. Mitty goes see, is in the middle of a surgery when he flakes and asks Mitty. As Mitty is about to make an incision, a yell from a parking lot attendant snapped him out of his fantasy.
Mr. Mitty’s last moment of fantasy in the book is when he was walking along main street. It reminded him of an incident where Mr. Mitty previously tried to change his tire chains and ended up injured; therefore he would wear a sling on his right arm whenever he went to get the chains fixed again. Mitty also heard a newspaper boy yell out about a trial. This inspired a fantasy about an incredibly skilled sharpshooter on trial. The crack shot was Mitty.
Though Mr. Mitty could have just been a nice old man with an incredible imagination, that is not how the mind works. Humans are constantly thinking about themselves and how actions would affect them. Even when thinking about someone else, we are thinking about how that person affects us or makes us feel. Behind every selfless action is a selfish intent, and that is the simple truth.
The words surprise, anger, disgust, and fear all share one obvious quality: they are words to describe human emotions. Not only that, but these feelings are powerful; they rile us up and make us anxious to act. In today’s world that is dictated by the spread of information through the Internet, these sensations can be evoked easier than ever, through false knowledge, or fake news. As technological advances continue to drive forward, it is more than important that no one is turning lies into fact for society and that reality stays intact through this age of misinformation.
In a perfect world, the truth would appeal to everyone more than lies. However, the human brain is simply not wired to work in that manner. A research study published by Science found that the emotions of surprise, fear, anger, and disgust were more prominent in fake news than in factual reportings. This is to be expected, as usually forged media is aimed at a certain agenda – whether it is to incite people, push a political objective, or manipulate minds. Our minds are prone to more arousal via higher dopamine releases, which is easily created through excitement from the above emotions caused by this type of information. This is the reason why when on a news website, many article headlines are designed to be shocking, eye-catching, or otherwise negative, for the sake of clicks. This urge causes increased sharing among people, and eventually spreads to many places real news cannot.
Human-created synthetic content is not the highest on the list of worries, however. Autonomy has made it all the more easier to facilitate and produce this kind of content. One instance of this would be the “generative adversarial network,” which is basically a program that loops a piece of fabricated media through an algorithm until it cannot distinguish the media from fact. This combined with the programs social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter that tend to advance fake news makes it easy for fake news to be made and delivered to the home page of people’s social applications.
It is not difficult to understand the implications of an increased amount of false information. In the TED talk, one example showed the economy spike downwards after an inaccurate tweet from the hacked Associated Press Twitter account went public, and subsequently, viral. Fake news has also infiltrated its way into our government, compromising this country’s integrity as a democracy.
In this world of information and misinformation, it is getting harder and harder to distinguish fact from fiction, and it will only get more difficult from now on.
Misinformation are similar to rumors. Rumors are said to be dangerous and false information given out from people to others. Misinformation is dangerous because it can cause someone to die and lose the image of another. In this Ted talk, Mr. Aral gave an example that Syrian hackers gave a tweet that Obama was injured by 2 explosions. there were 4,000 re-tweets in less than 5 minutes. This is really crazy and is dangerous and maybe ruined Obama’s image in being a president. The rumor was spread really fast because the title caught attention to many people.
If rumors continue to spread, people will be against each other and argue/debate. The world won’t be peaceful anymore and everyone will be in different groups, divided. Spreading rumors aren’t good at all, they ruin the reputation of others and separate people from each other disagreeing on different things.
Many citizens of US are suffering from this pandemic, due to mental and physical health problems. Parents are stressed due to their children and the lack of jobs, young adults are struggling with mental issues, and sometimes, it seems like the best choice for US is to reopen. However, is reopening more beneficial or harmful to US? In this essay, I will be stating why reopening right now would be harmful to many people.
Although reopening means that parents could have less stress or get their jobs back, they would still worry about getting COVID-19 during their work. For example, if school reopens, teachers will have to teach their students face to face, increasing the risk of the deadly coronavirus for both the students and teachers. The parents that arrive home from work would worry if they have COVID-19, or if their children somehow got the coronavirus. This will still keep the stress levels high for many individuals, and more people are at risk of the coronavirus.
Also, if US reopens, it means that the schools reopen and students would be at risk of spreading COVID-19 to other people. If just one person in that school has the coronavirus disease, it could spread to many people there. Online learning is one of the safest choice right now to prevent the death rate of COVID-19 from increasing a lot. Although the virus has far more dire health implication for older people, the younger generation would still spread the disease even if it is not life threatening.
However, US seems to be reopening anyways. Reopening does let some parents put less pressure on themselves and the risk of mental health issue would be decreased, but it increases the risk of others getting the coronavirus and spreading it…
Fake news has turned the internet into a dangerous place. Lies, deep fakes, hackers, and more, all make the internet a threatening place. Although fake news sounds like a very bad idea, there are ways fake news can help people and the media. There are tons of media related jobs out there, and fake news bolsters salaries and pay rates. People love seeing new and exciting news, so false news reports could sometimes be ideal to people. Surprisinly, fake news be helpful, and could keep millions of people employed.
Once a fake tweet, or post of some sort comes out to the public, the rate the news spreads is unimaginable. An example of how quickly fake news can spread was with The AP Twitter had been hacked by hackers. They released fake news publicly, claiming that current president Barack Obama was injured by explosions. As soon as the hackers tweeted this, the fake news spread like wildfire. Within about a day, the tweet had gotten almost four thousand retweets. This goes to show how quickly false news can spread. Some say that “fake news takes a world-trip before the truth even puts on its boots.” Because the public loves seeing new and exciting things, many would want to know more about it. People will most likely turn to the news or the internet.
News channels, news writers, and journalists solely rely on news. Without a topic to write or discuss about, these organizations are likely to fail. The biggest papers written by journalists can increase their salary by more than thirty thousand. Not only this, but college publications can be greatly affected. Many college publications have already shut down due to the fact that they were heavily in debt. The University of North Carolina’s newspaper staff all got pay cuts because they were going broke. The list of publishers forced to shut down can go on and on. The reason for their debt was most likely the result of not receiving enough public attention. Fake news catches the attention of millions of curious readers and listeners. Fake news gives these organizations an exciting and unheard of topic to write about. News channels, writers, and journalists are not the only ones affected by fake news. In fact, any person or group who work for media related purposes will always be affected by fake news, one way or another. News, whether true or false, is the sole foundation of millions of jobs.
Fake news may seem like a scary thing at first, but it fake news that keeps the media alive. Of course, normal news can be exciting and fun at times, but media consumers are not looking for something normal. People want something more exciting and new. Fake news can give many people new and interesting things to write about, keeping them in jobs. Although it may not seem like it, fake news is the one thing keeping millions employed.
As technology further progresses and evolves, creating and spreading fake news becomes a lot easier. Fake news is able to spread very quickly across social media platforms, and it is very hard to stop the spread of this news. Fake news will also become more and more close to real news, which could lead to nobody really knowing the truth.
The problem with fake news is the sheer impact it can have on society. A single tweet the the White House was bombed and the US president was injured was retweeted thousands of time and caused the US lose 139 billion dollars in a day. Another problem is that as technology progresses, the harder it is to discern real news from fake news. In a few years, people will be able to create fake audio and video clips that are nearly identical to real video and audio clips. If this happens, the effect would be immeasurable, and nobody will be able to tell what is true and what is not.
In order to stop the spread of fake news, governments are demanding that social media platforms be transparent in how data is collected, distributed, and used. The problem is that if that happens, the data will not be secure anymore, which is also very important to people. This is called the transparency paradox, and is why we can’t have companies being transparent. However, it is still possible to keep data secure while having companies be transparent, however hard it might be.
One way that this might happen is that the social media platforms share their data with only the government, which is pretty much the most trustworthy source there is. That way the government can stop fake news from spreading, while not giving the data to everybody, which would keep it secure while preventing fake news from spreading. The problems with this is that this would give more power to the government, which would allow it to have more control about what we know. Another problem is that there is no way to keep the government silent with our data, which means we would again just be giving the government more power.
“When the novel coronavirus roared into the U.S., mental health took a back seat to physical health. The number one priority was making sure hospitals wouldn’t be overwhelmed and that as many lives as possible could be saved.” (https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-pandemic-mental-health-toll.html) This means that when the coronavirus started in the US, physical health was valued a lot more than mental health. But as Schools closed, remote work became the norm, restaurants shuttered, getting together with friends was no longer possible, news stories containing many coronavirus deaths, and unemployment levels soaring, people should realize that mental health during this pandemic is just as important as physical health. People might be worrying about making sure the most amount of lives can be saved right now, but sooner or later, people should also know that with all the things going on, mental health is just as important as physical health.
In 2020, research shows that people are 8 times as likely to screen positive for serious mental issues than compared to 2018, and “70% met criteria for moderate to serious mental illness, compared with 22% in 2018.” (https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-pandemic-mental-health-toll.html)
Even though currently, physical health might seem more important than ever, you need to know that mental health is very important, too. There has been much more stress, with parents trying to care for their children at home. (because the children can’t be sent to camp) And young adults struggling to find new jobs after restaurants closed.
Having said that, even though at the start of the pandemic, physical health was the most important thing, now, as people are trying to get back to their regular lives, mental health is starting to regain it’s importance.