Social Media Blog #1 (1/19/18)

     People often use social media to keep up with what is going on in their family, friends, or even nemeses, lives. It is a convenient way to keep tabs on people they care about without being bound by space or time to meet each of them individually and chat with them. I personally view social media as a newspaper. I read it every night before bed and it is part of my daily routine that assures me that I did not miss out on anything for that day. I think it is important to be “in the know,” and social media has the market cornered on this idea. In order for this system to work, however, the users must share information about themselves. If people only sat behind the computer screen and read others' posts without sharing their own, the system wouldn’t work.

     Unfortunately, I must confess that I am the type of person who does this very thing. I have an account on several different social media sites and use them regularly. However, the people I follow would have no way of knowing this because I never post anything. I am essentially a “ghost” on social media. Why do I do this? For one, I genuinely don’t think I have anything worthy of sharing on social media that people would want to see. I am not an inherently interesting guy and I’m not the type of person to throw my opinions on hot topics out to the free world. Secondly, not sharing my life’s adventures but reading up on others’ gives me a sort of “edge” on the people I follow. I know a lot about them, but they do not know much about me; I like this. It’s not that I have anything to hide, but this grants me space to talk about myself when I run into these people in person. Most of the things they tell me I will already know, but the things I tell them will be the first time they hear it. This allows me to engage in conversation that elicits authentic, real-time reactions to what I have to share. They may also be more invested in what I have to say because they have not heard it before.

     Now that I have presented my personal stance on social media, you have a better idea of the type of social media user I am. I feel that this is important to better understand how this influences my ideas and thoughts on social media as we move forward with this blog.


     To conclude, I would like to briefly reflect on the topics discussed in class thus far. I am enjoying the informal, open discussion format of the class. I feel that this informality encourages more discussion and sharing of ideas from classmates. With a topic so relevant like social media, every student should have plenty of experience in this area and much to share. I like how we have started the class by looking at the origins of the internet and social media. It makes sense to follow the progression of social media chronologically, and it allows better insight into the social media of today by first looking at the conception of the internet. It’s crazy to think about how much technology has progressed in the past several decades and it excites me for the developments that lie ahead. With these advancements, people have begun to worry about the effects of such a powerful tool as social media. Social media can have many positive impacts such as raising money for organizations and spreading awareness about issues. However, it can also have detrimental effects such as the rapid spread of false information and the ability to harmfully impact people's mental health. We also talked this week about the different reasons why people might join social media or stick with one site over another. I was amazed by some of the graphs concerning the number of people on different social media sites. I didn't realize that just a couple of social media sites run the market in terms of users while others are left at the way-side. This begs the question of why? Accordingly, a term that I had never heard of before, "technological lock-in", accurately describes the reason why a lot of people stay on one social media site. Simply put, one social media site has nearly everyone on it, so switching to another site would not be easy when no one is on there, regardless of whether or not it is a "better" designed site. Overall, now that we have laid the foundation for the discussion of social media, I am excited to see where the conversation leads to next. 

- Yee Yee

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