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.