Istanbul Gelisim University - This time “Social Imperative Project” from the students

This time “Social Imperative Project” from the students

University students announced that they have started a project to draw attention to the issue of digital addiction. It is aimed to reduce technology addiction and gain the habit of reading books with the project called "Social Imperative Project" (SOIP).

Speaking about the social responsibility project, which aims to raise awareness of young people who use technology a lot about digital addiction, the project coordinator from Istanbul Gelisim University Asst. Prof. Dr. Melis Boyacı, “Digital addiction is a situation that we all face as individuals of an era in which digital transformation is intense. Especially with the pandemic, it started to be felt much more. We wanted to create an awareness about this situation. At this point, we decided to share on the social media platform as a place where we can make our voices heard and at the same time create awareness as a reverse corner.

“WE RAISE AWARENESS WITH HUMOUR”

Stating that they made informative shares about digital addiction and its varieties, Boyacı said, “At the same time, we try to bring digital addiction to the agenda in a humorous way and raise awareness by visualizing digital addiction in a fun and critical way with the illustrations and animated graphics made by our students. In addition, our students create a 'challenge' (trend) based on the books they read. Thus, we propose ways to use our time more efficiently with habits such as reading books against digital addiction. In addition, we are trying to emphasize the positive use of technologies that provide us with many facilities.”

"WE BECOME ADDICTED RATHER THAN CONNECTED"

Noting that there are different types of digital addiction, Boyacı used the following statements:

“There are different types such as social media addiction, digital shopping addiction, stalking, digital game addiction, mobile phone addiction. The synchronicity, interactivity and mobility provided by the new media brings along a social transformation. Now we can always be in contact with everyone, wherever we want. This brings along the desire to be in constant communication, also defined as ‘FoMo’, and the anxiety of missing something. We want to stay in touch and keep up-to-date with developments and shares. The time we spend on social media platforms is increasing, we spend hours looking from one shopping site to another on digital platforms. We find ourselves playing games for hours in front of our computers or mobile phones or surfing on the internet from that news to another. At this point, social media platforms provide us with a more free and democratic way of reaching information and being in communication and changes our status from being ‘connected’ to social life to being ‘dependent’ on these platforms."