Something I found interesting after keeping a log of my social media usage for a couple days this past week is that whether it was the weekday or the weekend, my media usage seemed to remain consistent. The frequency of on both school days and days without school appeared to be pretty much the same, despite the fact that my activities for each day where not.

After realizing this, I am now very intrigued by my media usage habits because I think that perhaps my focus in my classes is not the only thing being affected negatively, but so is my studying outside of class (whether it is a weekday or the weekend). The weekday I chose to document my media usage, or last Thursday, I had one class, Microeconomics. Even though I only had this one class the whole day, I had problems focusing the whole hour and 15 minutes of it. To compare, whenever I worked on school throughout both the rest of the day and also Saturday, I continued to have problems with focus due to an overuse of media.

Since my Microeconomics class is easy to make up, and additionally my professor posts all her lecture notes after class without fail, these were probably contributing factors to a higher probability that I gravitated towards my phone and specifically to the many types of social media (Facebook, Social Media, Snapchat) in class. It was very easy to lose focus during the lecture because sometimes her voice is monotone, and therefore I ended up using my phone at a much more frequent rate than I maybe I need to be.

Similarly, the same thing seemed to happen when I was trying to study for the remainder of Thursday and for Saturday as well. No matter what time I decided to try to study, I still was distracted or checking my phone for a good portion of the time or at about the same consistent frequency generally as when I was actually in class. Overall, perhaps this is a sign that I need to work to minimize the presence of media usage in my life in order to focus more, be able to work, and to actually remember that the reason I’m at UGA at the end of the day is to get a degree.

For the probe this week, interviewing someone with social media practices different than my own, I decided to interview one of my hallmates. By creating her first social media account in 6th grade, when she was just 12 years old, she began her relationship with social media at a relatively early age.

Facebook was the first account. Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter all came later, with the creation of her Instagram account halfway through 8th grade, and the creation of her Snapchat and Twitter accounts about a year after that. Throughout time, her use of social media has definitely evolved. For example, once high school began, she stopped using Facebook altogether and then she began to focus her attention primarily on the other three social media platforms.

In fact, she did not start using Facebook again until about halfway through her senior year of high school. Around December of 2015, she decided to finally “clean up” her account by unfriending people she wasn’t actually friends with in real life and getting rid of old posts and pictures from middle school. Additionally, she began using Facebook differently when it came time to search for a roommate through the UGA Class of 2020 Facebook group.

Today, she still consistently uses Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter, and sometimes Facebook. On a day to day basis, she says she uses social media probably about 45 minutes total. With Snapchat being the social media platform that she uses the most, she states, “I like to use it to communicate with people and to see what my friends are doing every day through their stories.” For Instagram and Twitter, the other two social media platforms she uses most frequently, it’s interesting because she uses them about the same amount of time on a regular basis, just in different ways.

For Instagram, she explains, “I use it as a way to post quality pictures and as a way to look at other people’s lives (sort of similar to Snapchat in this respect),” however, for Twitter, she states, “I use it as a form of entertainment. There are constantly funny tweets that people post, and in addition, Twitter can be a good way to stay informed about all that’s going on the world (when it’s accurate, which is rare).” Finally, though her Facebook usage is less frequent, the social media platform does still does have its uses. She says, “I use Facebook primarily for the purpose of staying connected with and updated for the clubs I’m involved in on campus.”

Finally, what I found most interesting about my friend’s social media usage was how well she knew each of the followers or friends across all her social media accounts. As stated earlier, she does know almost all of her Facebook friends in real life, about 90% to be exact. The remaining 10% are people she friended when she was looking for a roommate, who now also attend UGA as a part of the freshman class. Similarly, in regards to both Twitter and Snapchat, she knows almost all her followers and friends, the only anomalies being a few celebrities. If fact, the only social media platform where she doesn’t know almost everyone she interacts with is Instagram. She says she knows about half of her followers, but she keeps her account private so she has to approve every follow request she receives.

Overall, it was very intriguing to find out more about my friend’s habits. She definitely uses all the platforms in ways that are similar, but also very different to my own. Because I don’t have a Twitter account, I found it especially interesting to hear about how she uses that platform in particular. Additionally, in learning about how many of her friends or followers she knows in real life, it was surprising to see how many people she had met in person and actually knew, on Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter at least.  Generally, I now feel like my perspective on the different types of social media has broadened in ways I have never experienced before after the completion of this interview; it was eye-opening to find out more about each of these social media platforms through someone else’s viewpoint.

As it becomes less and less common to utilize the letter as a way to communicate, it also becomes more and more interesting to see what happens when you do write one in this day and age.  When it came time for me to do this very task, I decided to write to my best friend back home from Colorado.

Because we have known each other since 1st grade, you would think it would be easy to write her a letter of a decent length. Truthfully, it was, since we can usually talk for hours in person. However, at the same time, because technology is such an integral part of our society, it was definitely different trying my hand at such a different type of communication.

Since we mostly contact each other by texts and calls now, this felt much different. The thing that was difficult was writing with the thought in mind that each word I wrote became our entire conversation in and of itself. By expecting a long wait time until her response, I felt like I needed to include both questions about how she was doing and the specifics of her life in Colorado, but also how I was doing and what’s been going on with me here in Georgia all at the same time.

Though letters do not have to be long, I found it refreshing to create a long response rather than a short one. The short bursts of messages sent in a matter of seconds virtually just don’t have the same amount of meaning, or the feeling that someone took aside more than one minute of their time to write out their thoughts, elicit a response, and interact with family and friends in a way unlike any other. I’m glad I got to try out this form of communication, and I would like to continue occasionally sending letters through the mail in order to reignite a human connection that is centrally infused within the thoughts written with pen and paper.