My Journey with Social Media
When I was younger, social media almost exclusively referred to Facebook. There really wasn’t a whole slew of other options out there like there are today. I was taught by my parents, who have never had any social media accounts, that social media was a huge waste of time.
At the ripe age of 11, I created my first email account on my iPod Touch. For the first time, I was free to create accounts and finally understand why so many people were drawn to social media. At the time, Instagram was just becoming popular and so that was where I made my first account. Looking back, I posted some pretty dumb things as a 6th grader. I was captivated by the ability to share my photos and view what others were doing. Shortly after my friends convinced me to create a Snapchat profile so we could send messages (none of us had phones yet at this point so texting wasn’t an option). Back in middle school, Instagram and Snapchat served as my main communication with my friends outside of school hours.
As I entered high school, I downloaded Twitter so that I would know when school was delayed or canceled due to weather. I also had a Vine account for a bit, but I don’t remember using it that much. Strangely enough, I didn’t create a Facebook account until the summer before my freshman year of college. I think it may go back to the ideals set in me by my parents many years ago that Facebook was a negative platform and a waste of my time. Facebook was viewed as the social media platform for “old people” and I really didn’t have a need for it until I was entering college. With what I refer to as “the core four” social media platforms, I was content until about a year ago when I was peer pressured into downloading TikTok. Like my parents, I viewed TikTok as a waste of time. My roommates would sit for hours scrolling through videos with the same four sounds. I just didn’t understand the hype. I felt like I had enough other distractions in my life, and I didn’t need another one. I did however get hooked just like my friends and now watching videos TikTok is how I decompress before bed every night.
While I’m not as addicted or obsessed with social media as some people my age, social media is a very important aspect of my life. As an Integrated Media Arts and Marketing student, my future career relies on the prevalance of social media. I have been working for the Wildlife Leadership Academy as their Social Media and Web Content Specialist for two and half years. It is literally my job to create content, monitor, and promote posts on social media. It is very important for me to understand the different social media platforms and their uses.
Today social media has become very deeply integrated into our everyday lives. It is our platform for communication, entertainment, and distractions. For example, my softball team uses Snapchat to communicate updates to each other because the entire team doesn’t fit in a text group chat. I turn to TikTok as a form of quick entertainment before bed. My roommate watches YouTube videos for hours on end to procrastinate doing her homework. Without social media, our lives would look very different than they do today.
I’m not sure where social media will take society in the future, I doubt many people thought back in the early 2000s that social media would be where it is currently. I would predict that more and more platforms will enter the market as trends come and go. Above all, I don’t think social media is going anywhere anytime soon.
My journey with social media has been an interesting one. From starting off with limited knowledge of why everyone was so hyped about Facebook, to finally having the freedom of my own email to create my own accounts, and now getting paid to create content for a non-profit on social media. Social media has grown into an important aspect of my life, and I am excited to see where it will take me in the future.
