Thursday 21 April 2016

A Reflection on my use of Online Social Media

As a young adult in 2016, it is almost impossible to avoid using social media. For example, one of my favourite forms of communication is quickly becoming SnapChat. This app allows myself and my peers to send short videos and pictures with an extremely limited amount of text to one another within seconds. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is questionable. Although we are technically saying less to one another, the fact that we can send pictures and videos efficiently allows us to communicate much more in a short time than before. For example a clip from a holiday, a night out or a gig.
It is safe to say that without sites like Facebook, I would miss out on a lot of useful information. Particularly in regard to college. Not only do myself and my closest friends have a group chat in which we organise events, meeting up and discussion, my BACCI class have our own Facebook group chat (another incredibly useful aspect of Facebook). In this chat we share notes, useful information about classes, cancellations, updates on assignments and help for one another. It is easy to see how without subscribing to these social media and networking channels we would be left "out of the loop". Although I don't use Twitter and rarely post on Instagram, I often use them to see what others have posted. Social media is where I get the majority of my news, it's where I learn about fashion, culture, music and the world around me. Without using Facebook we may not learn about interesting cultural events or even relevant protests we may wish to attend for example. It allows us to create discourse around topics that are relevant to us. It allows young artists and musicians to get the word out about their events. We can get our art out there, into the public eye effectively and efficiently. I feel as though this will only progress with time as social media grows and becomes a more important aspect of our lives. Although there are of course negative aspects to this on-line, image orientated culture, the benefits and opportunities are endless in regards to expanding our knowledge and even our career options. This is particularly true for those of us contributing to the cultural industries.


1 comment:

  1. Interesting description of your use of social media, particularly Facebook. Deeper reflection on your choices would be interesting: what is it about SnapChat that you and your friends like? Why do you post snippets from gigs and holidays?

    ReplyDelete