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.
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