Blog Post 3

What impact have cameras had on society outside of the movie industry? With the advent of cellphones having the capability to record and capture, the camera has become ubiquitous. When many people think of a camera they immediately picture a beautiful sunset, a city’s skyline, or a special occasion with family or friends. Outside of capturing the aesthetics and cherished experiences, how have cameras been implemented to change our lives?

The beauty of cameras and technology as a whole, is that they are objective. The absence of a tainted viewpoint rooted in subjectivity and fallible memory allows for cameras to capture raw, actual events. Accordingly, cameras have been employed largely in the judicial sphere as concrete evidence of a technological eye witness account. For this reason, cameras can be credited with capturing many criminals and seeing that they pay the price for their unlawful actions. Many people will now just post a noticeable sign in their home window or at their place of business reading “Under Video Surveillance.” This has been found to deter crimes and ultimately work to keep people more safe and away from risky situations.

Now my attention turns to the opposite side of the coin; have cameras lead people to partake in more risky and dangerous behaviors? As the old saying goes, it is often much easier to be notorious than famous. Today, people can quickly find popularity by capturing and sharing videos or pictures of themselves partaking in a parlous stunt. Within the past month there have been several videos emerging of unsafe trends known as the “Tide Pod Challenge” or the “No Lackin Challenge.” In the tide pod challenge, people are supposed to bite into a tide pod to see its hazardous contents expel. In the no lackin challenge, a person is supposed to pull a gun out on a friend and ask them if they are “lackin.” Lackin is slang to mean not having a firearm on you. The friend is supposed to then pull their gun out on their friend if they aren’t “lackin.” No one is supposed to shoot their guns in the same manner that no one is supposed to ingest the contents of the tide pod. However, both incidents have occurred and resulted in deaths of teenagers.

Are cameras to blame for these unprecedented dangerous behaviors, or is social media? I say both. I don’t believe that cameras alone could create such an attractive trend because the videos would have a hard time finding a large audience. I also don’t believe that social media could, on its own, stir up a hazardous trend if there wasn’t video evidence of it occurring. Simply put, I think that social media serves as an outlet for people to supplement their risky behaviors captured on camera. If no one was watching, would people still perform such potentially health-harming actions? Aside from the small percentage of the population identifying as masochistic or high-stakes adrenaline junkies, I would say probably not.

What is the solution to this? That’s the harder question to answer. It seems that many humans derive an innate sense of awe from watching someone perform something so risky. To boil it down to simple business economics, its supply and demand. Given the fascination people have in watching risky behaviors, the demand is constantly high. For this reason, the supply may be a better target for slowing this process. If there was some way we could regulate the emergence of these types of videos from the general target audience, young adults and kids, we may be able to make an impact. However, this is also a very tricky step because what is regarded as risky behavior and the idea of autonomy create difficult barriers to surmount.

Overall, is there a way to curb the incidence of cameras and social media creating harmful trends? If so, is it through changing the supply or the demand? Or is the idea of regulating this type of communal sharing too impinging on the freedoms of social media and a person's autonomy?