My first post will be about the “evils and awesomes” of social media. My first taste of social media was in 8th grade when I signed up for a MySpace account. Since then, I have joined Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, in that order. Just like growing up, day to day nothing seems different; but as I look back at old posts, **!*::.{{EsPeCiiAllY EMbARASSiiNG TYPiiNG StYlES}}*!*, I can literally see myself change.
I use social media as a way to stay connected with family and friends by sharing photos and thoughts. That is the part I love about it. That even when my sister and I are over a thousand miles away (her in Los Angeles and me in Omaha), she can still see what I am up to. Another plus to social media is that people use it on their own time. There is no setting up a time when both parties are free, like phone calls. Instead, if I post a photo in the morning and my sister sees it in the afternoon, we are still connected but at our own convenience.
Being in college, everyone’s schedules are crazy busy, so it’s something fun to do in your free time. Which actually isn’t always free time, and that brings me to the parts of social media that I dislike. Sometimes, social media can get addicting. It becomes a problem when people use it in class rather than paying attention, or use it outside of class rather than studying and end up not having time for schoolwork. It happens to a lot of students, some just a little and some a lot. And when they look back over the semester and see how much time they “wasted” on these sites, it can be frustrating.
One other downfall I see in social media is when people count it as their actual friendships rather than use it as a tool to enhance friendships. It is useful when you cannot be with someone, for instance if they are all the way across the country, but when people sit on Facebook in their room and talk to their friends rather than hang out with their friends, something just does not seem real about that.
One thing that makes me nervous about social media is when people share too much with too many people. When people start sharing personal information such as where they live and what they are constantly doing with people they do not know, it can be dangerous. A good way to avoid this is by setting profiles to private rather than public.
My favorite tools are photo editing ones such as PicStitch that let me make a collage of my photos and change the appearance of them. Instagram is another app/site that lets me do this. Then I can share my photos on my other favorite sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
My social media habits have changed over time in that after I deleted MySpace, I used Facebook for everything: thoughts, conversations with friends, and photos. Now I use Facebook for links and photos, Twitter for thoughts, and Instagram for photos. I have also changed how much I post. I have realized that there are certain things that people should not know about me and do not care to know about me. These are the things I keep from posting.
What I want to get out of this class are ideas and skills to help me be smarter with social media. I hope to learn about new tools and sites I have not heard about yet. I also hope to be more connected with things I might take interest in and explore new ideas for the future.
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