Social Media Addiction

There are several signs that someone is addicted to social media in my opinion. Like danah mentioned in this previous chapter when social media begins to take priority over activities such as homework, learning, and overall health is when is starts to become an addiction. Learning to balance social media is a must. It is ok to have spend a little too much time on social media, like a good number of us teens do, but if it gets to the point where the scale begins to tip dramatically in social media’s direction that is where the problem starts. When someone spends all their free time in between classes or activities mindlessly scrolling through different social media platforms instead of checking them every once in awhile while doing something productive is when I think social media becomes “a lot” of social media.Social media is good for passing the time while riding the bus or chatting up friends at night, but spending all day with your face glued to the screen is a little much. Im sure many of my peers and myself included have had those points where we just keep refreshing our Twitter feed, Snapchat stories, or Yaks endlessly just to keep our mind occupied from real world problems, but when this form of social media-ing becomes a habit is when it becomes an addiction.

We teenagers have short attention spans and love to be entertained. Vine covers that criteria very nicely with its 6 second videos which have to be either outrageous or downright hilarious in order to get views and revines, and trust me there is a lot more you can fit into 6 seconds that thought possible. The shortness of the videos also sucks people into spending hours on Vine. I mean the videos are only 1/10 of a minute long so why not watch another one, and another, and another one until it’s 1am in the morning and you’re wondering what your doing with your life. Vine basically found the secret recipe to suck teenagers in. Youtube is also another site which uses videos as its main form of entertainment, but it has many differences from Vine. The sheer amount of content and the easy use of the search function to find what you want is what I believe gives Youtube its appeal. I can learn calculus from watching a series of videos to spend an ungodly amount of time watching fails all on Youtube. If it makes sense I would say Youtube is like the Google of videos in the sense that you can use google to find information about anything and Youtube can be used to find any video you want about pretty much anything.

For my research project I want to focus on Twitter. Specifically what makes a picture or video go viral. What is the tipping point? To gather data I would monitor what goes viral on twitter, and try to find its origins so as to trace its spread throughout the virtual world. Also as I gather data on more and more virals hopefully I will start to see a correlation between the content and what made it viral material. Is it because it's funny? Cute? Ironic? Maybe it offers a new perspective? I have always wondered why some things went viral while other that had just as much potential did not. By doing this research project I want to be able to answer my own question with facts and details that I uncovered myself and truly learn what makes viral videos and pictures “tick”.

Online Identity

danah boyd’s first few sections of her book were actually quite informative and caused me to do some critical thinking and re examine some of my past experiences on social media. One of the early topics she discussed during her introduction was that after talking to some modern day teens danah realized that nothing much had changed from high school back in her day: the gossip, peer pressure, group interaction, and the myriad of other intricacies associated with 14-18 year olds was all still around. The only difference was that it had simply switched platforms from front porch stoops, drive in theaters, and malls to social media as the place for teens to congregate and express themselves. I had not thought too much about this trend in teenagers; to me it was simply the thing to be doing-social media has always been there and so I don’t know anything different. As I read further into the introduction I began to see where danah boyd was going and began to draw lines between what teenagers did in the past and what we are doing now, and I came upon the same conclusion as danah that I mentioned earlier: teens will always be teens. My peer group and I used social media basically how danah described it in her book; we use it to connect with friends we already know so that we can talk, gossip, and share about things going on in our lives since we have limited time to do so person to person. I also found the point she brought up about how we teens create online identities which are not really “identities” per se but rather extensions of ourselves into the internet to be fascinating and it caused some in depth analyzation of my own social media “identity”. What I found after looking over my different accounts actually supported most of danah’s claims. I did not create an artificial identity on any of my accounts, but I did select what part of myself I wanted to show on each social media platform. On Facebook it was just pictures of me at events such as prom or on vacations along with the occasional couple month status update- nothing too revealing or serious, just general information about me. Instagram was like Facebook except it was more revealing of the activities I did, people I hung out with, and places I went on a more frequent basis. Finally Snapchat was just full on me since I can post anything I want on there without fearing the repercussions too much since I feel as if I have the most control over who sees what I do on it. So I noticed a correlation between the level of freedom and self expression as I moved from social medias that I did not have as much control over to ones that I did have control over, which I believe supports some of what danah was trying to get across.

The topic of collapses also interested me during my readings. I personally have never had to deal with one since I keep most of my social medias separate, and I do not use Facebook that often which seems to be the main culprit behind many of these collapses due to the immense interconnectivity that it provides, but the situations that arose because of identity construction on social medias piqued my interest as it never occurred to me that those situations could arise so easily. Regarding the issues and collapses that could occur as identity construction intersects with Instagram and Pinterest I believe that there really should not be that many problems. For one the article gave me the most info on Pinterest I have received other than knowing it was a site to post stuff you liked and wanted to buy. Judging from my previous information on Pinterest and the info supplied by the article I do not see how identity construction plays a role on this site, although it could be possible I just simply don’t have enough experience on the platform to form a solid opinion. Instagram on the other hand I do see as possibly bringing up some issues with identity construction since it is the most used social media and most of the users are teens, my peers. But just like I stated in this blog post and my previous one it is not that hard to keep your Instagram account from being viewed by anyone that you don’t want to. There is a simple privacy setting, it is easy to untag yourself, and Instagram is usually reserved for more “classy” edited pictures not ones that can jeopardize a future career or school opportunity. In fact many of my friends have two instagram accounts: a “real” one and a “secret” one. The real one is used for public viewing and generally does not contain any scandalous pictures or the like, and the secret one is where they are on private and only friends with people they are close to and so they are able to post more freely. By doing so, even though it requires a little more management, having two accounts allows my peers to enjoy Instagram to its fullest without having to worry about putting the wrong “image” out there.

Introduction and Social Media in the Teen World

         Social media has rapidly become an everyday part of many of my generation's lives, and I have been able to witness its effects on my peers and myself firsthand from a teenager's perspective. My name is Oleg W. Collins, or OC for short, and I have been a Myspacer, Facebooker, Tweeter, Tumbr, Instragrammer, Snapchatter, and a Yaker (plus many more) throughout my pre-teen and teenage years. Now I am a freshman in college- the prime age group from whom many corporations and studies collect their marketing data that represents the entire teen-age group as a whole- and so now I am old and experienced enough social media wise that I can truly study social media's impact on the teen world and compare what I learn with my own experiences.

    In the first article Andrew brought up many points about different social media sites that I agreed with and found similar to my own experiences along with some that I didn't. For example his take on Facebook pretty much "hit the nail on the head" in that most people my age do not really use Facebook that often but cannot just simply delete it. His comparison of Facebook to an awkward family dinner party that we can not leave holds true, but Facebook still has some practical uses- some of which Andrew stated and some that I can add. First off Facebook does keep us connected with the family members that we may not be able to see so often, but it does restrict us to the content we can post and the opinions we can voice without our family chiming in or contributing their own two cents. Facebook makes it easier to find people you met at this party, that event, or during that vacation that you did not get their number on but remembered their name and wanted to stay in touch. Similarly Facebook provides a lifeline of communication between old friends or classmates should you want to check up or get together with them some years in the future since phone numbers and addresses may change but Facebook pages don't. In my own opinion these last two reasons are the main cause that I along with most of my friends continue to use facebook despite its decrease in popularity with teens.

    Regarding Andrew’s other descriptions of the major social networks I agree with them for the most part except for two: Medium and Twitter. Medium because I had no clue what it was before I read this article (blogging is not my favorite type of social media activity so go figure), and Twitter because I just don't find his review on it that accurate. I will admit that Twitter is not as popular as it once was since it is almost a decade old (I know right?), but Andrew’s opinion that twitter is “pointless” or that most people who log on to it only use it to complain/express themselves does not match up with what I and many of my peers use the app for. Mostly I use twitter as a source of comedy and news with no intentions of my future boss or job looking at my tweets. I believe Twitter is meant for funny GIFs, vines, hilarious pictures, twitter beef, and news since it is guaranteed that as soon as any major event occurs I will be informed about what happened instantly via Twitter; Twitter is more for entertainment, a way to pass the time. As for the point of bosses or other professional persons looking at my tweets, my friends and myself included don’t use our real names as our @ names so it would be difficult to find us using Twitter’s search function and even so the option to be a private account is always there, and so I see Andrew’s point to be well pointless. One last comment I have to add about this article is in regards to Andrew’s description of Kik and I might as well include its partner in crime Tinder. We all know what Kik and Tinder are for, and I won’t go into detail about their uses, but trust me. We all know what those apps are used for.

    Just as I did in Andrew’s article I also found several points in Miss Boyd’s article that I agreed with and some that we were way off. Her analysis that Andrew did not mention Twitter as a great source of news and activism matches up with what I said earlier in this post, but her other comments about the social media app threw me off. She commented that she doubted Andrew tried to make an “explicitly racist comment” about Tweeters’ use of the app as a form of complaining/self expression, which in my first and subsequent rereads of Andrew’s article did not seem racist to me at all; in fact that thought never even crossed my mind. Twitter is like a stream of consciousness-I tweet what's on my mind and others do the same, and if I see something I don’t like in my community or in the world you best believe I will send a tweet complaining about it. Most of everyone does the same thing, we are all one big Twitter fam, and the fact that Miss Boyd brought up demographics, which I admit can be useful in analyzing social media use, I just don't see the point she was trying to make. She did however bring up some different perspectives that I personally had not thought of such as the rural use of Facebook and immigrants use of Whatsapp. I have been abroad and found Whatsapp an excellent way to stay in touch while overseas or when back home, but I never thought about a reverse situation where an immigrant teen would use Whatsapp to communicate with family not in America. However thinking this through more I don't see why teenage immigrants would not be able to create a Facebook to communicate with people in foreign countries since if they can communicate via Whatsapp surely they could use Facebook to do the same and have a better experience. Danah Boyd also brought up  that it is dangerous for tech companies to get the majority of their information about my generation from Andrew’s and my peer group, and I could understand that, but also our peer group represents teenagers with the greatest opportunity to use every platform of social media and stay on top of what is “current” and or “hip” with our generation so it makes sense for companies to rely on my peer group for their marketing and product information.