@ 12 year old Katie
Hey Katie.
Congrats! You just opened your first social media account. I know you’re frustrated because mom isn’t letting you add friends on Facebook without her permission. You aren’t allowed to post pictures of your face and you have your security settings cranked up all the way but trust me, she’s doing it to protect you. The internet safety classes at school suck and I know now one else takes things like this seriously but you should.
By the time you figure out that internet safety is important, BAM — those teenage hormones will have hit and you’ll start excessively posting to social media in the attempts to get those coveted likes. Let me give you a hint — NO ONE LIKES LIFE UPDATES 3 TIMES A DAY. In the future, Facebook will release a new feature called “On This Day” and you’re going to get to relive EVERY embarrassing post. So let’s just make a pact right now to skip the daily public journal entries.
Soon you’ll discover Twitter. It’s currently my favourite social media. It’s where you’ll spend a lot of late night hours, and you’ll have to make a professional account to tweet grown up things and build networks. But don’t worry, you’ll still have your original twitter you made in grade 10 to retweet pictures of dogs and puns.
Now I have to warn you. Social media is a blessing but it can create a dark side. There’s a real life out there and you can’t let the metrics control and consume you. There’s going to be a rough few years where you’ll feel obliged to take staged selfies and filter them so many times until it barely looks like you, just to get likes. You’re going to follow a bunch of people, just so they’ll follow you back and your follower count will go up. It’s not a fun time, you’ll get a obsessive about it until the likes and comments control your mood.
PLEASE realize that your self worth lies outside of how many likes you get. You are worth so much more than all the words and pictures you could ever put on your social media.
PLEASE take a break if you find yourself getting back into those habits, because they will tempt you from time to time.
PLEASE realize that other people are going through the same thing. No one has only happy days, and they don’t expect that of you, and you shouldn’t expect that of yourself.
With all that said, social media is an incredibly useful tool, all at your fingertips, and you can do incredible things with it! You will receive so many cool opportunities through social media. It will turn into a way for you to connect to friends, family and colleagues. It’s a way for you to stay connected to the world, to keep up with news, but also it can be an amazing stress-reliever — I can’t even begin to describe how good the memes get.
To finish, just take care of yourself. Once things are on the internet, it can be hard to take them down. Taking a break from social media is more than okay especially if your mental health is at risk. And don’t forget to post things because you want to and not because you feel you have to!
Oh — and when you come to the point where you have to choose your courses for 3rd year, make sure to put RTA 902 Social Media in your shopping cart ;)
