Yesterday I conquered my fear and posted my first Tweet ever (First Tweet!) for our class challenge. I've had a personal Twitter account for a few years but only really started reading tweets in the last year or so. The concept never seemed too interesting to me, until I started to feel like I was missing information when I was talking to friends or co-workers. Whether it was celebrity gossip, actual news, or events in their lives, I always seemed to be a few steps behind because I didn't keep up on social media. It's one thing to not know what celebrity is dating who, but to miss important events in your friends lives was frustrating.
I wanted my friends to understand that I didn't care about social media; to me it was a place to sort of stay connected to people you kind of knew. We were actual friends and I wanted to hear their news from them. This was frustrating on both sides, but also provided a lot of humor for dinner parties. It often still does.
As social media grew, I knew that I needed to adapt. Some of my friends are very connected on social media, and for those friends I try a little harder, making sure I comment on their statuses or photos so they know I'm present, but they've adapted for me as well. My friends will call or text when they have important news to share before putting it online because they know I don't want to read it on Facebook, I want to hear it from them and share in that joy or pain.
One thing that hasn't changed much was what I shared. I have been pretty consistently hands-off on my sharing. I'm usually just an observer, and even that is sporadic. When I think about why, it is usually a blend between over-thinking what I would even say, the time commitment, and feeling uncomfortable sharing information for everyone to read. Facebook has been my only platform until recently, and so I began wondering how that compared to others. According to this chart from Pew Research Center, statically I'm not that out of the norm for not using Twitter!
I wanted my friends to understand that I didn't care about social media; to me it was a place to sort of stay connected to people you kind of knew. We were actual friends and I wanted to hear their news from them. This was frustrating on both sides, but also provided a lot of humor for dinner parties. It often still does.
As social media grew, I knew that I needed to adapt. Some of my friends are very connected on social media, and for those friends I try a little harder, making sure I comment on their statuses or photos so they know I'm present, but they've adapted for me as well. My friends will call or text when they have important news to share before putting it online because they know I don't want to read it on Facebook, I want to hear it from them and share in that joy or pain.
One thing that hasn't changed much was what I shared. I have been pretty consistently hands-off on my sharing. I'm usually just an observer, and even that is sporadic. When I think about why, it is usually a blend between over-thinking what I would even say, the time commitment, and feeling uncomfortable sharing information for everyone to read. Facebook has been my only platform until recently, and so I began wondering how that compared to others. According to this chart from Pew Research Center, statically I'm not that out of the norm for not using Twitter!
This article is from March 2018 and details Social Media Use in 2018, focusing on early trends. You can find the full article here. I'm at the lower end of one of these age categories so I think it's a little harder to see exactly where I might compare myself, but overall my social media usage is less than someone in my age range.
How does your social media usage stack up to this study?
Great post! Thanks for sharing your personal experiences of using social media. It's no surprise to see that Facebook and Twitter dominate the social media usage landscape. At the same time, the younger Americans stand out for embracing a variety of platforms and using them frequently. It is evident, though that social media consumption extends well beyond Facebook. I can agree with this chart as I find myself more on Facebook and YouTube than other social media websites and apps. Having said that, I have tried all different types of social media platforms, both professionally and personally, but I believe that Facebook and YouTube satisfy my content needs the most. I find the content very useful on these two platforms. That's perhaps because these are the most advanced platforms in terms of integrating machine learning in their algorithms. Facebook's PageRank and YouTube's EdgeRank (Google's algorithm originally) make sure that the users are catered with the type of content that resonate with their most frequent and favored content consumption. I have managed the advertising campaigns for my clients in different verticals on these platforms, and at that time, I knew how to target the right set of audiences using these algorithms specific to them. Please feel free to ask me if you have any questions about such social media algorithms and want to know more usage stats on social media consumption across different verticals, especially education. Happy blogging!
ReplyDeleteI had a Twitter account before but I did not use it much other than following news or celebrities. It was because many of my friends were not there. Social media has a lot of functions but I really think that keeping relationship is the most important function of them. Now, with my classmates connected through #6414 hashtag, I feel connected and it is more fun to login and read tweets!
ReplyDeleteI definitely consider myself to be an outlier in terms of my social media usage for my age bracket. Before this course I didn't even have a Twitter or Instagram account, nor did I seek out any of the content being generated on these platforms. I've always seen posting as a chore; trying to craft the perfect caption to a photo with just the right amount of humor to not come off as snobby. Perhaps my view might change by the end of this immersion in social media and Web 2.0...or maybe everyone will be tired of listening to me. Time will tell!
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