Social Media's Impact on Me
After reading the first chapter of Personal Connections in the Digital Age by Nancy K. Maym, I began to realize different bits and pieces of how social media has personally affected myself.My use of social media began when I was in 6th grade, after my middle school purchased mini laptops for each student, and I received an iPod Touch for my birthday. With the access to internet at my fingertips, social media began to captivate my life and relationships with everyone. Personally, phone calls, FaceTime, and text messages, and other social media websites/applications like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat.
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Seven Key Concepts
The reading discusses seven that help to identify the different media platforms and how people interact with one another.
In my history of using social media through different forms of technology, I have found that my social interactivity with others has increased tremendously. I have been able to reconnect with friends from elementary and middle school, as well as family members that live out of state.
In terms of temporal structure, I have found that communication via instantaneous formats like phone calls and instant messages are what I use the most. I think that synchronous communication is more common than asynchronous communication for the younger generation because we have the habit of communicating with each other all day everyday. Because we are scared to be left out and have a desire to know what people are doing, we must need a response instantaneously.
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The back fall of using social media in forms of communicating like this have harmed many people's ability to communicate with others in person. As a student studying media studies, business, and Spanish, I feel that interpersonal communication is most important in the business industries. In order to sell a product at a store, you must know how to persuade people and pick up on their social cues when doing so.
As a college student hoping to get a job upon graduation, I am well aware of how storage and replicability can help make or break landing a career. I think that it is very important to think about everything you post before posting them because future employers have every right to not hire you based on something immature or irresponsible that you may have posted in your past.
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Lastly, mobility of social medias, which I briefly mentioned, has caused society to almost become obsessed with the availability to contact others. Because it is so accessible to talk to others, you feel you must know what people are doing and where they are at all times.
Who Uses?
I came from a small town; in fact, there are more cows in my town than people and the nearest stoplight is 17 miles away. According to the text, Nancy Baym writes, "People living in urban and suburban communities were 10-12 percent more likely to use the internet than people living in rural areas," (Baym, 19). Although I may be bias because I have never lived in a rural area, I think this is completely accurate because there is a lack of social activities like movie theaters, bowling alleys, sports, gyms, or other things to do. Therefore, people turn to electronics and social media to feed up time.
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For me, I am unsure how I feel about the extreme increasing use of social media in our daily lives. Because there are so many pros and cons, I see both sides of the conflict. Although I think the amount of time people spend on social media is excessive today, I also can see the positives of being able to get ahold of people when it is necessary.
