Social media is used by many people in order to express themselves outwardly and is a useful means to express one’s personal opinions or share what a person is doing with their friends and family. Just like many other people I enjoy the common use of social media in today’s world and feel that it is a useful tool for people to show others what they are doing and keep in touch with people from all over the country or world. The main forms of social media that I use are Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. Although I have all of these forms of social media, unlike many other people with these platforms, I choose to use these social media accounts mainly for following others on what they are doing and what they have to say than to post my own thoughts. I feel that knowing that the internet is a place where all information that we post is permanent and can be seen by anyone else is a dangerous thing to one’s personal image. People often post things in the spur of the moment, often what is not who they truly wish to portray themselves to be to their audience. This can cause people to come across as different from their authentic self and make their friends or colleagues see them in a different way. This is why I often use my social media accounts for casually following on what others are doing or seeing what is a hot topic in the world today. I support those who use social media and do believe it is a great way to express a person’s beliefs and opinions.
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Hi, my name is Micaela Gotfredson! I am from La Jolla, California a small beach town in San Diego. This is my first semester at Gonzaga University, I transferred from Texas Christian University where I went for my first semester of freshman year. I am so excited to be at Gonzaga and see where life takes me. I am currently living in Catherine Monica (CM) and still unsure of what I am going to major in.
Although the internet is a huge place and full of millions of people, I believe that social media makes the internet world even smaller. I have four social media accounts including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. I tend to only use Instagram and Snapchat because they are visual and full of interesting and exciting photos. I love to hear about other people’s stories and I believe that every photo is supported by a story. When it pertains to my social media accounts, I tend to be very selective on the photos I post because each and every post represents me and the type of person I am. I typically only share photos that are significant to my life, such as a graduation or birthday photo. Although my social media presence is very significant, it represents me and my personality very well. While many people are concerned about the amount of followers they have, but I am more concerned about the type of people watching my life through social media. I set my account on private, so I get to pick exactly who follows me. The majority of my followers are people I have met throughout my life weather they be close friends or just acquaintances and the other portion of my followers are family members from my giant family. When my followers scroll through their newsfeed and come across one of my photos, I think they are shocked to see that I finally posted something, but then they are excited to see that I am happy or enjoying myself. I try to keep my social media platforms very positive in order to help my followers have a positive connection to my profile. Social media is huge in many different ways in all of our lives. Even if I don't like to think about it, social media tends to be in my life more than it should. According to CNN.com, an average teen spends an average amount of 9 hours on social media a day. http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/health/teens-tweens-media-screen-use-report/ This leads me to my social media life and how it revolves around me. I do enjoy social media for it's enjoyment that helps me pass time during the day. I do currently have most of the big social media lay-outs: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. These social media programs do revolve around my day in a great deal. I enjoy to post pictures of myself and things I enjoy on Instagram. Twitter is mostly spent at looking at other peoples Tweets. Facebook is similar to both Instagram and Twitter. These social media devices do control our lives and are truly taking away our mind from seeing the world as it truly is. Sadly we are encompassed by this "mirage" of amazing pictures, captions, and memes that somehow bring enjoyment to our daily lives. Social media is a disease and it is blinding us from truly seeing the world around us.
The last day of finals my junior year of high school, I get out of the car and walk into the house prepared for a long evening of studying for the next day’s finals. I walk into the kitchen to find a camera case sitting innocently on the kitchen table. I put two and two together and I realized that my parents had surprised me with a new camera, a Canon Rebel T3i. I’ve always loved capturing the present through pictures since I was given my first disposable camera in elementary school, since for me they do contain more meaning than words will ever have. My love for photography as a hobby has only grown since that day and that has been the main reason for my social media. I try to represent my best self on the internet because all of my social media accounts are set on public, something I value greatly as I have nothing bad to hide from the world. Just like any other high school or college aged students, I have many social media accounts - Facebook, Instagrams, Twitter, Snapchat, and Tumblr accounts. Unfortunately I am slightly addicted to most of them, and I have found that it draws away from connecting with my friends who are often sitting right next to me. I use Facebook to share my work with my close family and friends and I have a personal Instagram, @coral_ng, and a whole Instagram devoted to my photography endeavors, @coral_photo. I have found that I post deeper more emotional posts on my photography Instagram than on my personal since not many of my close friends know about it and most of my followers are strangers. In a way this provides me with a safer place to rant about my life struggles without people directly knowing about it (I guess until now). This account has served as a place where I can be completely confident about my work, since the comments on the photographs are mostly positive. And my attitude is more apathetic towards any negative comments on my artwork because the internet is not always a place where the truth is told so I can distance myself from that mindset. In a way, it helps boost my confidence in my ability to take decent photographs. When discussing my photographs in person, I am less outgoing and excited about my work due to my fear of not being good enough. And I think by having this account, I have a new founded enthusiasm for following my passion despite any negative opinions it may cause. Besides my photography Instagram account, I’ve found that social media serves little purpose besides showing off all the “new” ,“cool” and “exciting” activities that I have done or things I have achieved. Usually my posts are about a singular positive event that does not accurately define how well my day is going. In reality, these small things should not define how great my day has been, and sometimes I wonder why I feel inclined to post so much on my snapchat story or write a post on Facebook exclaiming how I’ve won something. And I think it all comes down to this – we all want to fit in, and by posting what I’ve been up to on social media I feel as if I have something to compete with. I know I made these social media accounts to fit in with others, society has pressured me into getting these accounts. I have, on many occasions, seriously considered deleting my social media accounts so that I could better interact with other people face to face and on a deeper level. That being said, I think (like my photography Instagram account), if used correctly, other social media sites can be used as a foundation for individual's creativity to grow.
I am pretty involved with social media, I use Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook pretty regularly. My conditioned response to answering why and how I use these would be to share pictures with my loved ones and have all my favorite memories consolidated into one place, but as I think about it, there is more to it. In my opinion, there is an unspoken but accepted pressure to use sites like these to show how fun and exciting one's life is. People post pictures and snapchat stories of them and their friends, the exciting event they attended, the awesome trip they went on, etc. This is why I believe one's digital persona is not at all an accurate representation of one's true self. The reality is that all of us are going to have some horrible days, and we will all have bad things happen to us, but these are not the moments we are going to post on social media. Instead, we post pictures of the exciting and happy times, giving off the perception that we are always happy and have our lives figured out. That being said, despite the negative aspects with this age of the internet and social media, I continue to post and check social media, because ultimately it is fun and a good way to stay in contact with people. I think that as long as one is aware of the unauthentic nature of social media, and uses the sites in moderation, it is overall fine to continue using them.
Once I began using social media my parents tried to instill good habits in me so that I wouldn't get myself into any trouble on the internet. With that being said, one rule I still go by with regard to posting, retweeting, or sharing things is that if I put it out on the internet, am I fine with my grandparents seeing it. When I go to post something to social media I try to choose things that truly depict the person I am. Over the years I've chose to use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. I use these four social media platforms to not only stay connected with friends and family, but to also stay connected to what's going on in the world. Since I use social media to stay connected to friends and family, I'd also say that they're my audience. Since many of the people I follow or are friends with on these platforms know me, I try to say things that sound like me. If I were to compare my digital self from my authentic self, I'd like to say that we are the same person. Though that's what I'd like to say, I know that my digital self is different from my authentic self.
@Trauty1323 On the internet, I would like to think I accurately represent myself. I know that the internet is permanent so I censor myself most of the time. I have an Instagram, Facebook, Vine and Twitter. On twitter I mostly just retweet so most of my twitter is not that personal. My Instagram consists of cool pictures that probably make my life look more thrilling than it is. My Vine and Facebook are both pretty lame because I do not post that much. The main reason I don't post that much is because I'm aware of my audience. Any future employer could find anything I post so I think of that before I throw out an offensive tweet.
@brodeanbro |
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