chris-durand

[chris-durand]

Social Media Comm Blog #1

Tumblr Blog #1

Although there has been an extreme rise in how social media affects our everyday lives, I do remember a time before apps like Instagram and Snapchat came into my peripheral. It wasn’t until the early 2010s that I first took notice of social media in its current form. Some could argue that communicating with strangers on Roblox or using AOL chatrooms was the original social media, and they’d be correct. However, the evolution from then up until now has shown a vast growth in its influence on society. Defining social media in basic terms would oversimplify a complicated and diverse way of communicating, but, using a more detailed definition could lead to issues in the future. If social media and online communication change in a way that has not been foreseen, a singular basic definition cannot be tied to something so impermanent. Therefore, social media’s definition can only be defined by its most current status, which is everchanging. I personally define social media as a platform of communication used between civilians, corporate bodies, and most recently artificial intelligence to spread information (and misinformation) on the World Wide Web.

My first introduction to social media was via Instagram in 2012 when the company first went public. Although it was a hot new craze, Instagram had the same novelty feeling as any other useless app on an early-generation iPhone/iPod. As years went on, however, Instagram became a permanent staple in how we communicate and view one another. Then came Snapchat, a video-sharing and messaging app that had a feature where all public posts had a shelf life of twenty-four hours before disappearing. Over the subsequent decade (2013-2023), Snapchat became a cesspool of people who garnered clout and social status by romanticizing their own lives, which is a phenomenon that has plagued people my age for years. From my experience, nothing good ever happens on Snapchat. 

I see myself as being a very socially conscious user of social media, limiting my time on the internet and doing everything in my power to not get bogged down by the microcosm social media algorithms have curated for me. I am constantly deleting and redownloading apps, a struggle I have been fighting since making my first Instagram account back in grade school. While I am able to limit my own use significantly, those who can’t should not be blamed for insane average screen times and constant internet usage. I use social media in passing, whereas others may use it as an escape or alternative to the physical world. Many people born in the late 1990s to early 2000s are children of the internet and have inadvertently been the driving force behind social media’s explosion. It has been curated for us by people and industries who had no foresight as to what their ideas would do to our brains and culture. Now everyone has ADHD, and that’s real. 

I am anti social media. I have no actual use for it other than using it as a form of entertainment when I’m bored (i.e. Instagram Reels, Twitter feed). However, I can recognize that there are many ways to use social media for productive purposes. I would like to understand this new facet of life that I have grown up with and fought against. In many ways, I have been indoctrinated, pandered to, and have had the agency to use the internet freely taken from me without the very obvious presence of an algorithm choosing what I see (and what I don’t see). I would like this class to give me a larger perspective as to what social media can do for me and how it can be used for something other than consumption or political propaganda.