Oversharing Online

    Hello everyone! This week, I will be discussing the impact social media and social networking has on us and our daily lives. I personally do not interact with social media very much. I use Twitter (I prefer to call it Twitter rather than X) daily for the sake of keeping up to date on my interests, such as the games I play, as well as what is generally going on in the world (which is not great right now). I do not actually interact with others on Twitter. I never post, my account is private, and none of my friends are on there, so I purely use it to stay informed. I instead use Discord to stay in touch with my friends, which I would consider more of a social networking site rather than a traditional social media site. Since my personal interaction with social media is minimal, much of what I discuss will be based on what I observe of others that use social media more frequently. 

    Every uniquely different social media platform will have its pros and cons depending on what you hope to accomplish on the platform, as they are all designed with specific features that distinguish them from other sites. For example, Instagram is one of the most popular sites for sharing images and videos. While it might a be great place to see your friend's vacation pictures, it is not the greatest site for having in depth discussions. For that, you might go to a site like Reddit instead, where you can find discussion posts sorted into different communities that have active community members who will reply to the discussion. If you are planning a vacation, Instagram would have the best photos of the vacation spot, while Reddit would have people discussing their experiences there, while Twitter often has a mix of both, not leaning too far in either direction. Twitter provides a platform where you can quickly keep up to date with people and topics you care about, but it may not always provide the most reliable information.

    Next, I want to compare social media sites that enable creativity as their primary function versus sites that are more focused on presenting information. For example, TikTok, a site made for posting videos that pretty much everyone is familiar with by now, has exploded in popularity over the last half a decade or so. Most people associate TikTok as a was to express themselves creatively, as well as a way to watch silly videos as a form of leisure. In contrast, most of what I see on Twitter these days is political discourse and tragedies taking place around the world. Based on the content of each platform, it would be fair to assume that sites like TikTok are becoming more popular because they have a more positive effect on our mental health, while sites like Twitter have a more negative impact. 

This graphic by David Carr from https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/social-media-news/twitter-threads/ shows creative social media sites like TikTok and Pinterest surging in popularity, while more informative social media sites are dropping in popularity.

    Lastly, I would like to discuss Facebook. While I have never personally used Facebook, almost everyone in my family has experience with the platform, so I have a decent idea of how it affects them. I recall a while back that my grandma deleted her Facebook because seeing everyone posting themselves having fun without her made her feel left out. Eventually, she redownloaded Facebook because she missed interacting with those she loved on there. Facebook impacted her positively by connecting her with her family, but it also made her depressed because she would compare her own life to others, which would not have happened if everyone's lives were not public on Facebook. I also briefly interviewed my mother on how Facebook has affected her. She said it made her happier when she could see her friends and family meeting their goals and having positive experiences, but also that it irritated her when she was forced to see political opinions that she disagrees with. In short, Facebook allows us to see content we would not otherwise be exposed to, which can be good or bad depending on the nature of the content. Without anyway to filter the content, there will always be things we are exposed to that can be positive or negative.