#lsci121

Facebook is the only social media I have any experience with. I use it to keep in touch with my family and friends in California. This gives me a little sense of connectedness; I get to see what they are up to, updated pictures, and occasionally chat with them. I mostly feel a sense of isolation because they are so far away. The interaction we share on Facebook it not as rewarding as in person. I think calling and having a conversation over the phone is better then staying in touch only through social media, it is more personal.

I do feel a connectedness from my social media activity. I am not all that interested in social media thus I only use Face book, and only have close friends and family as connections there. I have found that it is helpful for keeping up on the lives of my friends who have scattered to well… everywhere… and every once in a while when I have some awesome bit of news to share I will do so and enjoy the comments. I am not on face book regularly and I have noticed that when my friends are too invested in face book they become frustrated that I don’t comment enough or like their posts. I do see how, if it is the goal to have lots of followers, likes, and comments, it would be easy to be depressed after spending time in social media and discovering no success. I have found that when by friends on face book are getting depressed or frustrated with lack of feed-back it has more to do with how things are off line. It seems that taking out their frustration online is less harmful than blowing up on their families. When I actually notice grumpy posts (‘cause I can be oblivious) I usually go the extra step and call them. I think when it comes down to it, the cause/effect isn’t directly related. It’s like my wellbeing professor says just because crime rates increase when ice cream sales go up, it doesn’t mean that ice cream causes crime. Perhaps for those who get depressed after perusing social media, are depressed for other reasons. Maybe after hours spent perusing other people’s lives they feel upset not because of social media but because they were on social media avoiding what it is that is bothering them and now must face it or find another distraction… like more social media…!!! If you haven’t seen this you gotta!

     For me personally I feel a little connected when using social media.  When ever I am on Snap chat, Instagram, or Facebook I like I know what all of my peers are up to. Or what they have been up to in the last week.

     I like to keep a healthy balance of physically talking to someone and social media balanced more towards the physical part of the way I communicate.  I only look at social media to look at peoples pictures, and keep the communicating to either in person or a phone call.

Sometimes I think I’m more of the type to let organizational systems on my devices deal with organization and archiving my digital information, other times I get a little OCD and go through everything so that it’s all organized according to however I feel that day. So it’s a little bit of a toss up for me, but I definitely am at a certain level of disorganization when it comes to my digital life.

       I am a big believer in managing personal information through technology.  I have all of my information such as photos, papers, important documents, and stuff on back up hard drives.  If I were to lose all of my stuff I would be devastated for half of my stuff, and the other half I would definitely be in some serious trouble because most of my stuff I have saved besides my photos that I have saved is all school related work.

I think this discussion is super interesting. The idea behind social media sites is to help connect and bring people together. And at a first glance, it seems to have done just that. personally, it allows me to talk to people I barely get to see. In addition, I can see statuses and photos of those people, which gives me the feeling that I can still be a part of their lives, even though I’m hundreds or thousands of miles away. This is especially important to me because I live far away from my entire family. My dads side lives in places like Georgia, Massachusetts, and Colorado, while my mom’s side of the family is in Germany and the Czech Republic. If it weren’t for social media, i would almost never get to talk to them, or see what’s new in their lives. Yes, there is still phone calls and texting, but it’s hard to schedule that many phone calls and pay for international calls on a regular basis - cue Facebook! 

However, when one takes a closer look, something daunting reveals itself. Just as the New Yorker article suggests, social media makes people super unhappy with themselves. When you think about why, it makes sense. People used to do things because they liked it, and it made them happy. But now, I find a lot of people I know (and sometimes even myself) doing things simply so that later they can post about it on social media. Now, logging on to Instagram, I rarely see a powder day that hasn’t been documented. It has become a competition of who can do the coolest stuff, or even more accurately, who can look like they do the coolest stuff. People do stuff in public in order to post in private. That’s just the way it is now, and I can’t think of a more isolating and lonely way to live.

I think the only real way to navigate the fine line between “connecting” with people and flat out isolating yourself from everyone else is to be aware of the motives behind your social media use. Are you logging on to see what everyone else did today so you can compare that to yourself, or are you logging on to say happy birthday to your cousin in California? Noticing why and how often you log on will allow you to become self aware with your behaviors. Are you living for the rush of being online famous or are you living to experience the famous offline world?

BTW: HAPPY EARTH DAY.