When I was in high school, I thought social media was annoying and overused. I liked to make fun of all the ways people would "talk" to each other. There was Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Tumblr, Vine, and many others that I would ridicule. I thought social media was silly because all the people I wanted to talk to, I could just say to their face or via text. My friends and family would video chat with me, text me, or talk to me and so I ridiculed social media for mainly having no use to me.
College happened though and my communication with friends and family decrease exponentially. I started working at least twenty hours a week to pay for school, I had classes all of the time, meetings, and club activities. I became so involved that I stopped sleeping and talking to my family. I got a few friends that I would see at work and would try to see on my days off. Overall, my communication was awful with everyone and everything and so social media became my outlet for communication.
I got involved more and more on Facebook. Facebook is where I am able to update a status of how I'm feeling or share my latest accomplishment or even latest disaster. This isn't for me to broadcast to the world if the world happens to see it then whoopy. Facebook became my outlet to update my friends and family about my life because I lack the ability to make a phone call. It's much less personable but it's my way of trying.
The next thing I became more involved in was Snapchat. When I first got on Snapchat I had almost no one to talk to. I would chat with my cousin or my sister but eventually, I found some friends to Snap every now and then. I don't go on Snapchat very often because it drains my phone battery extremely fast but I try and talk to people on there sometimes. I've found most prefer it to texting, I would rather text but picture messages are fine too. It helps build my short term memory.
I think one of the biggest impacts social media had on my life was the part of it that actually left my life. I used to watch YouTube every day at the same time every day to watch my two favorite gaming YouTubers. However, with being so busy, I'm lucky to watch even two seconds of a video. Now, when I go on YouTube, I turn it to concentration music so I can study or do homework. I no longer watch YouTube or Netflix or television in general.
Overall, I don't knock down social media anymore except when it works to shame a person or group of people in some way. I find social media to be informative and addicting and I haven't quite discovered if that is a good thing or not.
