Menu
University of Michigan School of Information

Lampe: Social media can have positive effects

A headshot of Cliff Lampe. "UMSI Professor Cliff Lampe was quoted by the Detroit Free Press in an article about a new 'healthy' social media app"

Tuesday, 11/02/2021

Michigan native Daniel Kastner is launching a new social media app that he says is designed to be healthier than existing social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, the Detroit Free Press reports. The app, called Ruva, will give its users tools to cultivate what they see in their feeds. Kastner says this operates in a way that is closer to “real life” social interactions. 

University of Michigan School of Information professor Cliff Lampe studies social media and its effects on society. He says it’s no surprise people might find recent research on social media alarming. We often panic about new technologies. 

“Every new information or communication technology we get comes with reasonable concerns about what's the meaning of that tool,” Lampe said.

The thing that people fail to realize is that there are positive effects to the current social media sites that people get from them outside of just the dopamine rush. It's easy to underestimate that there can actually be good things that happen in social media.

Read “New 'healthy' social media app could put metro Detroit engineer at edge of the future” on Freep.com.

Learn more about Professor Cliff Lampe.