My friend is a freshman and we both went to high school together. She stated that her social media usage is daily and she has opened up her various social media apps “too many times to count”. When asked when she felt she opened her apps up she said she found herself opening them up when she was in an awkward situation, before bed, and when she woke up and whenever in between. She doesn’t post often but it does depend on the social media. Posts more on snapchat than face book because she uses facebook to merely scroll and doesn’t really contribute to it while on snapchat she’s more active. She uses snapchat the most, uses Instagram, and facebook. She said that she used all her social media accounts for entertainment purposes. However, she uses facebook to follow current events as she follows a lot of the new channels on there. She uses her phone the most and then her laptop.
When she went through her follower/friends list she found that she interacted the most with her friends and family on facebook while her friends on snapchat were people she that she was friends with personally meaning Snapchat was more of a private social media platform while on facebook it’s people that she knows or mutual friends. All of her social media is on private so that no one except the people that she adds can see her activities. She’s not worried about her social media postings currently, as they are very rare, but she’s pretty embarrassed about her posts from way back in 6th grade. She watches the advertisements of brands but doesn’t directly interact with them unless there are any sales or specific events that a certain brand that she is interested in is promoting. She has noticed the political advertisements as well as makeup advertisements as well as short ads by talk shows about different current events and as programmed by different browsers she has noticed advertisements for things that she has googled or shown interest in from her searches. My friend also mentioned that she used to be really big on social media usage as we all were when we first got facebook but as she got older and entered high school and now in college she has greatly limited her social media usage. She is now aware of how not private her posts are due to the current vulnerable technology so she is constantly wary of what she shares, likes, or searches.
This seems like a classic example of someone who uses social media a lot (she opens her apps “when she [i]s in an awkward situation, before bed, and when she w[akes] up and whenever in between”—whew!) but hardly posts. That’s one of the ways in which this assignment has been an eye-opener to me; I assumed that people who were reading/looking a lot at a social media platform were also posting there.