I decided to interview my sister because she is similar in age to me but we have totally different personalities, so I was curious to see if that could cause us to have different social media habits.

She started off by telling me her favorite social media platforms are Instagram and Snapchat which is very similar to me, as those are the only two I use daily. I soon realized that we have similarities and differences in our social media habits. For example, we both check Instagram daily but rarely post. However, my idea of rarely posting is once a month and her’s is about four times a year. We both use Snapchat to keep in contact with people, but I use it more for friends and she uses it more for family. We both agreed that we find ourselves using social media more when we’re bored.

We differ mostly in that she is willing to give up social media and I am not. For Lent, she gives up social media and will randomly decide to get off social media for a time. I, however, really wouldn’t know what to do if I didn’t have social media to turn to during my times of boredom.  She is also very picky about who she lets follow her, where as I will let someone follow me as long as I have heard of them or they are a friend of a friend.

This probe was an interesting one because it was cool to look at someone else’s social media habits and compare them to your’s. It gave me a chance to reflect on my habits and see if I could improve or change the way I use social media in any way.

I decided to interview my mom about the way she uses social media because I know that our uses are much different. She has had a facebook for years to keep up with her friends, but she hardly ever posts. Now that me and my brother are in college, her main use of facebook is to scroll through her timeline looking for pictures that we are tagged in and saving them to her camera roll. My brother and I always get mad at her because she will “like” every picture we are tagged in even when its been posted by one of our friends that she doesn’t even know.

Her new source of social media is Instagram. She said that she joined instagram because all of her friends have it, and all of me and my brother’s friends have it, and she wants to keep up with everyone. The only times she will post is when I pick out the picture, the edit, and the caption and post it for her. My mom says she has no idea how to operate the app and leaves up to me to post, because she wants her friends and family to see what she is up to. She is still the classic mom that tries to “zoom in” when I show her a picture on instagram, even though I tell her every time that that isn’t possible.

Social media is very different for different ages. For example, my mom says she will check her social media once or maybe twice a day, usually before she goes to bed, as opposed to me, who checks my social media probably 100 times a day.

I interviewed a friend from my hall about her use of social media. I know she uses different platforms for different purposes, and figured that interviewing her would be fitting for this assignment. She utilizes Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, and Snapchat the most. I use Instagram and Snapchat as well, but don’t have a Facebook and haven’t updated my Tumblr blog in over two years. She mainly commented on how social media has impacted her life and why she uses it in the first place. Her comment that stood out to me the most was when she said that she quickly loses interest in social media because she often feels as if she can’t “live up” to other people’s lifestyles. As a result, she takes long breaks from her social media after she loses this interest. For example, she just recently posted her first picture on Instagram in over a year, whereas I’ve posted many more within this past year.

I found her feeling very interesting, as I’ve never felt this way when using social media, but can definitely understand where she was coming from. My friend also commented on how her social media habits have changed since coming to college, as she tends to use snapchat a lot more frequently. I tend to use snapchat more as well, since it’s a fast and easy way to communicate with new friends. She also commented that she is pretty exclusive in who she lets follow her, since she keeps her accounts on private or only accepts certain friend requests on Facebook or Snapchat. This made me reflect on my own social media accounts, as I keep mine pretty public to the world. However, her input made me consider changing this.

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.

I decided to interview my roommate about his social media habits and preferences. We both have similar morals and beliefs so I was curious to see how this translated to the world of media.

My roommate Kyle and I are both very down to Earth people, who also enjoy engaging in personal relationships based on real interaction rather than relationships based upon media interaction. Kyle uses social media daily, typically in between classes to pass the time. This is similar to my trends of social media, but different than the social norm. Interestingly, he only uses snapchat; meaning no twitter, Instagram, Facebook, vine, or bleacher report. I asked him why he doesn’t use these forms of social media and the response I got was rather intriguing. He told me that these apps were not merely social media, they embodied comparative media. This meaning that Instagram and Facebook have the hidden influence of making the user compare their lives to their friends and followers. Both me and Kyle agree that comparison is a negative and unhealthy style of living, and that by avoiding these forms of media, it helps to minimize comparison. Kyle also told me that those types of media will not benefit him in any practical way and will only distract him.

He told me that he likes snapchat for a few reasons. One being it is a way for him to communicate with friends in a very informal manner. He said that he can keep in touch with old and new friends experiences much easier through it. This allows him to be constantly relate able to them in real life conversation. Another aspect that he enjoys about snapchat is the humorous side of it; snapstories provide him with comical relief throughout the day.  The only thing that he doesn’t like about snapchat is that sometimes he feels obligated to keep up with streaks, or to post a snapstory at a fun event just for social recognition.

Kyle knows 100% of his friends on snapchat in real life which suggests he is very selective when adding friends. He would be potentially concerned about authoritative figures being on his snapchat friends list, because as he stated, he has “no filter” on snapchat. Kyle also outlined how is overall social media useage has been on a downward trend over the years. He used to be a regular user of iFunny and Facebook years ago, but realized that those just wasted his productive and free times.

Overall, Kyle and I have similar opinions regarding social media; It is very excessive and potentially harmful, but it can be worthwhile if used in limited capacities. He just takes his social media interaction one step past mine, and only uses snapchat. This however is very very different from the trajectory of today’s society. In America, a social media epidemic is practically occurring, with kids in elementary school beginning to discover the world of social media. Kyle and I see more to life than that.

I interviewed one of my close friends, who I thought would have a very different experience than me when it came to social media.  He is very social and is almost always with a lot of friends, so I figured he would be pretty active on social media, but he tends to keep things pretty private when it comes to sharing parts of his life with others.  It turned out that we are actually pretty similar in almost aspect in regard to social media.

He checks it less often than I do, but not by too much.  We both tend to check our social media when we’re bored or feel like we have nothing to do; however, he’s a lot busier than what I am, so his time that he has to check it is less than the time that I have.  He said that he definitely checks his social media multiple times everyday, but that he posts very little, if ever (he has a total of 2 Instagram posts).  Similarly, I check my social media a lot more than I actually post on it.

We also both keep our different forms of social media as private as we can.  Not only do we both set the privacy settings, but we also try to manage who we allow to follow our accounts.  He said he knows almost every person that he allows to follow all of his forms of social media, but that he does follow a few celebrities or accounts that he doesn’t know personally.  On the other hand, I don’t follow a single person that I do not know personally or have some sort of knowledge of who they are.  For the most part though, we are both very similar in our attitudes toward privacy.

Where our behaviors differ the most is when it comes to the types of social media that we use.  I solely have and use Instagram and snap chat while he uses Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and snap chat.  He said that his social media use has definitely increased as he’s gotten older; he started with just Facebook, but once high school hit, he was then into almost every form of social media so that he could keep up with friends who no longer go to school with him (our schools split in middle school).  I never really cared about social media or keeping up with people that I went to elementary school with.

I decided to interview my Godfather for this assignment. I knew that coming into the interview he didn’t really use social media in the way that I do. My Godfather, Scott, is a Technology Executive who runs a consulting firm filled with computer engineers, but immediately pointed out to me that he doesn’t have a Facebook account. Instead he relies greatly on a social media platform that I have never even heard of called “Linked In.”

Scott pointed out that he was able to use LinkedIn every day in his work in several ways. In preparing for meetings, he will often “connect” with the people he is meeting with or simply search their profiles to understand more about their background, and the background of the company that he is meeting with. He also pointed out that if there are particular skills that he is looking to recruit, he can find those online and reach out to people in the Atlanta-metro area. Scott noted that he is relatively protective of his list of connections, and only chooses to accept invitations from people with whom he has a personal relationship, but other than that was not too concerned with security. LinkedIn also allows him to join professional groups, and select favorite content that he says are “curated for his own professional interest.”

I’ve never used LinkedIn like my godfather uses it in his everyday life. I do find that I use Facebook very often. I feel like I check that the most because my friends on there come from everywhere so I like to keep in contact with them and see how they are doing on a daily basis.

A funny note to this interview is that as we were talking, his wife (Rhonda) pointed out that in fact he does have access to Facebook, and has been known to “stalk” her account at least once per week.

During the interview, I learned several differences in how I use social media and how my godfather does…

I decided to interview my mom, whose social media use is much different from my own. She has had a Facebook for about six years and an Instagram for about two weeks, which she uses as a way to post pictures from special occasions and keep up with her friends and family. I would say that I check social media about fifty times a day as a habit while my mom says that she checks her social media maybe twice a day, once in the morning and once at night.

My mom has never really been that big on social media. She has always had a Facebook, but it is very rare that she should ever post on it. She says she like to have it to see what all of her old friends are up to. I was extremely surprised about two weeks ago when I went on Instagram to see that I had a follow request from my mom. I would have never expected her to get an Instagram, but she said all of her friends are switching from Facebook to Instagram so she wanted to do the same. She said that she feels like people post too much on Facebook and that they tend to be less boastful on Instagram. I guess this shows how social medias are broadening to include different types of users. I was extremely shocked when just last week my grandmother, whose only social media is email, decided to get an Instagram.

While neither my mom or my grandmother have posted anything yet on Instagram, they say that they like to use it as a way to keep in touch with their close friends and family. While people my age tend to follow many people that they barely know, I have noticed that people my mom’s age only follow and accept follow request from a more exclusive group of people that they know very well.