Giving Social Media Credit- Week 3 Post 3



Some thoughts related to how social media is appreciated after reading the Teens and Social Media article
  • These kids are able to plan, for both their professional and entertainment pursuits, much better than I could at their age, because they have the tools to do so.  I had to use magazines to get the kind of casual instruction/information they are getting- magazines were the most current type of information to me when I was researching colleges to attend.
  • Even pre-social media, a school’s website would be fairly static in the information it could provide.  Usually updated once a year, with perhaps a text news feed being the only updated/current source of information.   With social media, not only do you get a dynamic information source from the school itself, but also get a direct line to the students and faculty, who will provide other information that was inaccessible in previous generations.
  • It’s interesting that the teens had to be probed into recognizing how they were using social media for instruction.  It’s making me reevaluate how I use social media, as well.  It reminds me of a discussion question our first week, to define what social media is.  I think most people restrict their thinking of it solely to connecting, liking, and commenting on personal social media account pages. 
  • In this way, when interactions like that go bad, it’s easy to see social media only in a negative light, as a time suck transforming society for the worse.
  • But this article highlights the way the more beneficial aspects of social media don’t get credit.   
  • There’s a concern re: the privacy aspects of social media, but there is a way to just use social media strictly for the informational/viewership reasons, rather than actually contributing to it. Some articles I have viewed online with suggestions on how to control your time usage and privacy of social media give advice along these lines- those articles say that it’s impossible to truly disconnect from social media anymore, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it in a way that is antithetical to how its intended but still beneficial to you.   I.E.- continue to use it strictly for informational purposes, rather than contributing to it. 


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