In this games for health module I played the children’s game called “Body Splash”. I thought this was a great game for kids when they are first learning all about the human body. It focuses on specific hydration points of the body. To be honest I think even a surprising amount of adults might get these answers wrong. A lot of people do not know much about their own bodies. I think this is a great game for kids as it is easy to use and also gives a good amount of information.
Based on a SWOT analysis I rated it as follows.
Strength- Colorful, easy to use, good information
Weakness- The game is very short, could have made it longer
Opportunities- Make the game a little bit longer with more content
Threats- There are better games out there, so make it better so that people chose this one and not others.
For this reflection I found the journal article on the syllabus that really spoke out to me. It was called “Social Media Use and Perceived Social Isolation Among Young Adults in the U.S.” and I found it to be shockingly true. It also really got me thinking about my own life and own choices and how social media could definitely be affecting my own mental health.
The study addressed the very ominous fact that social media is having a major negative affect on peoples social health. Basically, the results of this study showed that people who engaged in social media more often, young adults, were more likely to be socially disconnected and isolated than those who did not.
This is a scary thought in my opinion because social interaction is what makes humans human. Seeing, touching, feeling and being physically present with another person is what makes humans thrive. Social media is taking that away from people. What if people no longer feel the need to physically be near each other. It is really sad to think about but also it makes sense why this is happening when people engage so heavily on these social media sites.
Below are some of the results from the study. The higher the number of minutes on social media the worse the results yielded.
It is so easy to feel alone, unworthy and depressed after a scroll on social media. I have been victim to this before. I noticed that my mental wellness is at its worst the more and more time I spend on social media. I think this is because it is so easy to compare yourself to people’s seemingly perfect lives. It makes people first of all feel addicted to keep on scrolling but also to feel “less than”
In order to really save the future of our mental wellness and health we must take a look at studies like this and really think about how much time we are spending on social media sites.
For our podcast we decided to discuss the many health subscriptions that are online as well as online health supplements. This is a hot topic right now on social media as well as wellness in general.
We are talking about what we have tried, what others have tried and how they work or do not work.
We have all decided to take part in each roll. We are all doing audio and will all piece it together in our own and unique way. We will also all use our own music.
This round of projects is discussing podcasts and the importance they can bring into the listeners lives. I personally am a huge fan of podcasts. I love listening to podcasts while I run, clean or drive. I believe there is so much valuable information that can be learned from podcasts and self-improvement that can be made.
The first article I read from the podcast flip board was the picture above. Here, The author wrote about how she was able to listen to many podcasts involving body image and eating disorders to help her with her own food struggles. She mentioned how she loved these podcasts because they gave solutions, focused on how to deal with eating disorder and food embarrassment and much more. She also listed out her favorite episodes from among the podcasts.
The next thing I did was listen to one of the podcasts listed in the module. The one I chose to listen to was with Jordan Harbinger with guest Michelle Tillis Ledermen. This podcast host actually brought on a professional in the field of communication and had her speak on how to help if you are introverted or how to really excel in the strength you may already have if you are extroverted.
I thought this podcast had very clear sound quality. Both people speaking could be heard extremely well. The content covered was impactful for any people because it gave real life tips on how to communicate, what to look for in people body language and different characteristics. I believe that there were some ads in the podcast which align with the views of the podcast and help support the people making the podcasts.
On this weeks assignment for social media takeover I used Instagram. Instagram is one of the social media pages I find to be very effective in attracting a large audience and promoting ideas. Health is specifically trendy to promote on instagram. The thing is, many people put out pretty mediocre content. My focus was to put out quality images and ideas. I would like my information to actually helpful, engaging and attractive.
My first post followed what the past articles I have read about social media take overs say to do. Introduce myself with a quality picture.
So far the post has gotten 3 likes, but I am hoping for the likes to reach higher after I added some hastags to increase the engagement. I added #health #healthandwellness #nutrition. These hashtags will attract views from the people who it is targeted towards.
The next post I did was what I want my main focus for the social media takeover to be. I want the main focus to be simple nutrition. Focusing on nutrient dense and filling foods. Most days I will be posting meals I make during the day that are fueling me properly. I think this will be a good way to increase education in an interesting way and also give people the resources (recipes) to make the food.
The post below is a meal I make and I describe in depth in the caption what I did to make it. By the time I checked back in the post it had up to 6 likes on it. So, I think it will continue to get some exposure because of the hashtags.
The past few weeks in class have been focused on the benefits of social media and wellness and the perks that are involved. We have been shown multiple ways to make more attractive social media posts as well as how to reach a larger audience, how to promote our accounts and what platforms to use.
One technique we were shown to make an attractive post is to do a double video post. In this kind of post you can have a side to side comparison that catches the viewers attention. Another example we were shown was making something fun, relatable and un-intimidating when introducing a health topic. An example is the MeddyTeddy. This account has an adorable little teddy bear that does yoga and meditation and gives tips and tricks involving meditation. It was a smart way to increase awareness in a non-threatening way.
One of the valid points made was in the workplace a valuable tool is using social media group and promotion to help with employee wellness. I think this is a fantastic idea. Creating closed groups on facebook with employees for various health needs is a way to engage workers while giving them useful information. I am actually part of a Facebook wellness group and it helps keep my goals on track having others around me who are doing the same thing. I think this is an underutilized tool that could help people on their journey to make them feel supported and less alone.
Another tool mentioned was gamification of wellness and social media. Creating a little bit of healthy competition is a great way to keep people motivated. Using tools such as leaderboards was an example given. I again have seen this used in the social media wellness word for a lifestyle program I am doing. The coaches use leader boards to help push their new coaches to the next level.
Another great tool that can be used is flipboard. Prior to this class i had never heard or seen this before. Now, I see that it is a great way to share articles on a platform and keep it looking clean and organized. It has inspired me to make one of my own and put articles that I relate to in the wellness realm. Below is a screen shot of the flipboard by Dr. Yang that he shared on the syllabus page.
Another article I found to be noteworthy was titled “Gamifying life (May Possibly) Work for Me!”. In this article a mom wrote about her experience into seemingly being “tricked” into the gamifying wellness word and…it actually worked for her. She talked about how after gaining 25lbs she joined weight watchers and used and app with a points system, so it is kinda like a game. She became successful with counting points and making it something that was like an activity. She eventually even turned to the Wii fit in order to get more “points”, again another game. Even though she wanted this all not to work, it did. I think making health less counting calories and instead making it fun can make it more of a maintainable lifestyle for people instead of just constantly starting and stopping health routines. If you really find something that makes it fun you’re going to be more likely to stick with it.
In the article titled “what does a successful social media takeover look like?” the author touched on some important keys to remember when doing a “social media takeover”. The writer, Will Schmidt, made sure to first tell us what a social media take over is. For those who do not know, social media take over is giving access of an account to outside individuals to diversify the content or maybe even just focus on some specific type of content. It is a great way to show the followers new things and new ideas or even promote certain ideas or products.
Another useful article that I read was called “your social media cleanup checklist” here, there is an infographic that gives the steps to creating a social media platform that is marketed to what you want to attract and what sort of audience you want as well as how to just keep a clean social media. One step is checking the image size, another is “double check brand consistency” this means that your username across different social media platforms should stay consistent.
Below is the infographic that was used in the above mentioned article”
The next video I found very interesting was the video on facebook by “wise guy” and he speaks about making your social media presence attractive to people would come across it. Giving yourself a profile that is attractive is what we should be going for. Making your avatar square, face only, front lit and smiling, like-able and confident. A cover photo should be interesting and tell a story. Lastly, another very important point was that everything should be up to date. This shows someone is a believable source.
All these articles had some very valuable takeaways. One being that how it looks is very important. Putting out quality, consistent and reliable content is the way to go.
During the process of making a video mash-up I learned a lot of new things. It took hours of trying out different programs to figure it all out. Eventually I found a program through the SUNY Oswego website that was reliable. called VideoPad Video editor. I did have to eventually pay for it in order to post the video but it will be software I can continue to use.
The program was fairly easy to use, one I got the hang of it, and was easier than imovie and other programs I tested out.
The finished product is here, and something I am actually very proud of because it really took a lot of effort!
Below is the process of my video making:
So far in the creation of of the motivation video we have had to find numerous sources to make our actual videos.
The main struggle was finding videos to lace together that all sort of fit the same theme as well as being the same speaker. For my motivational video I chose to take snips of speeches of Rachel Hollis’ speeches. She is a woman who specializes in motivating women of all ages to stay the course and follow what you truly want to do.
Below are the recordings I will be using:
I had to download each video from youtube and convert it into an mp3 file so that I could use the audio.
I did realize thought that in order to have the video mash up included I would need to use a video downloader so that I would be able to piece together this motivational video on imovie.
With this video downloader I was able to directly use the files from youtube and bring the videos on my computer.
After importing the videos to my computer I am starting the process of splicing them all together to complete the movie making process. This is definitely the most difficult part as imovie is very fussy and keeps on crashing.
Rachel Hollis
The general idea of Rachel Hollis’ speech is on the word “no” and basically said when other people tried to do the same thing she was trying to do the reason they aren’t doing it is because someone said no and they listened. She said she did not listen to the word no. When it comes to our dreams no is a detour and not a reason to stop. Reevaluate and strategize.
The quality of Rachel’s speeches are in an audience, with no background audio behind it. The intended audience of this video is mainly women I think, but also anyone who is wanting to be successful.
Rachel talks in a relatable and comedic way to people. She is not too serious as she cracks various jokes throughout the talk. She makes many jokes to engage her audience. Rachel has a very casual speech pattern and she emphasized the same point over and over to really get it into the audiences heads.
So far in the creation of of the motivation video we have had to find numerous sources to make our actual videos.
The main struggle was finding videos to lace together that all sort of fit the same theme as well as being the same speaker. For my motivational video I chose to take snips of speeches of Rachel Hollis’ speeches. She is a woman who specializes in motivating women of all ages to stay the course and follow what you truly want to do.
Below are the recordings I will be using:
I had to download each video from youtube and convert it into an mp3 file so that I could use the audio.
I did realize thought that in order to have the video mash up included I would need to use a video downloader so that I would be able to piece together this motivational video on imovie.
With this video downloader I was able to directly use the files from youtube and bring the videos on my computer.
After importing the videos to my computer I am starting the process of splicing them all together to complete the movie making process. This is definitely the most difficult part as imovie is very fussy and keeps on crashing.
After reading the articles and watching the videos in the syllabus over the past couple weeks there were definitely distinct ones that really stood out to me and sparked my interest. One article in particular that struck a chord with me was “A Health-Tracking App Analyzed My Blood and Told Me I’m 31 Going on 54”. I thought this article was insightful and really got my mind thinking about the benefits of these health tracker apps but also the down sides they may cause.
The article went into detail on how a woman sent in her blood to test for different biomarkers. The idea of it is intriguing. Send in a sample and be able to know all these different statistic about your own blood levels and components, what diseases you could end up being at risk for and where you are healthy.
Maybe not so fast…as the article stated this may deter people from wanting to seek out the doctors knowing they already have something wrong. Many people are terrified of the doctors office, a study in Britain even revealed that 61 percent of people are fearful of going to the doctor because they are afraid of bad news. (According to and article written by the Independent.) These new technologies may worsen the problem even more than it already exists. Sure, your average health and wellness student/major etc may find it utterly fascinating but the average joe, not so much.
Another idea that popped into my head was the security of these. How much of our DNA do we want to be giving out to random companies? How much do we actually trust these companies that are getting a blueprint to our DNA? What could this mean in the future? We are legitimately giving away our cells to random companies and trusting them to use them ethically. There is risk to giving companies this material.
Also, as we talked about in class what this could mean for insurance purposes. If all the sudden our insurance sees that our biomarkers are 50 years beyond our actual age, could they deny coverage for “pre-existing conditions”? These are all questions we should be asking ourselves before we get too into the technology that it takes us over.
There are the positives, don’t get me wrong, but at what cost?
The image above is from the article about blood samples tested for biomarkers.
A very interesting video I found explained the risks that people do not think about associated with sending in saliva samples to websites such as 23&me and Acestry.com. Basically, when you send your samples over and you agree to the terms and conditions you give that company all rights to your DNA. This means they can do whatever they want with your sample. You no longer own it.
In general, health and technologies associated it with it has some really fantastic benefits, but there is also a scary side. Each individual needs to determine where they draw the line in their health journey and what resources they are willing to use and give up.
![Your Social Media Clean-Up Checklist [Infographic] | Social Media Today](https://www.socialmediatoday.com/user_media/diveimage/social_clean_up_info.png)
Christine 