Honors Theses (Philosophy)

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MEANINGLESS SCROLLING: THE EXISTENTIAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT CONSUMPTION
(University of Oregon, 2022) Harte, Torin
In this thesis, I explore the ways in which social media operates to deny, disrupt, and distort our individual relation to the pursuit and experience of meaning. Through the work of William James and Viktor Frankl, I delineate meaning as a concept and the methods by which we attain meaning in our lives. After grounding meaning in the thinking of the aforementioned thinkers, I turn to the structure of social media and the way in which we relate to the realm of digital media consumption to offer an explanation for the psychological harms that have been associated with excessive use of social media. By instantiating the structure of social media in Theodor Adorno’s work on the culture industry and free time, I elucidate the mechanisms by which excessive content consumption on social media detriments the possibility of pursuing and experiencing meaning in our lives.