Blog #1

Being asked to evaluate who I am regarding my social media presence is something that I have never really had to evaluate, but have thought about a few times. Social media is increasingly becoming intertwined in the lives of individuals and unspokenly become a part of their identity. On top of that, if you want to be a functioning member in society, you need some form of social media that you are willing to check and keep up with from day-to-day. Along with beginning to search for a full-time job after graduation, I've found myself more conscious about what I post and what I like.
My social media presence has changed throughout the years and I have increased my presence on certain platforms, as well as decreased my activity on others. My current social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Like many, I believe that I do not show my full personality online. I think I have always had a weird relationship with how I act on social media. There has always been a heavy need to produce certain content or make your feed have a certain aesthetic. I feel like I exclude almost half of who I truly am as an individual across my social media platforms. While it is now a ‘trend’ to have a quirky type of persona, my quirks are what seem to be excluded from my presence the most. On Twitter, having certain quirks, like being socially awkward, for example, are trends and have been made into memes and relatable content. To fully examine my social media presence, I want to go through each platform I use, starting with Twitter.

My Twitter is nothing special. I barely tweet original content but I retweet things that I find funny or important. Because of that, my primary use for twitter is enjoyment and/or escape from stress. Due to a lack of personal content, my twitter is a place where I am not as vulnerable in comparison to my other social media platforms. I think the lack of vulnerability stems from being nervous about what content is ‘twitter-worthy’ and what content I should keep to myself. The culture that revolves around who can get the most retweets and likes also holds me back from being my true, authentic self and tweeting whatever I feel like. I often find myself deleting tweets that do not get as much engagement as I thought they would. I feel as though I’m not funny enough to produce content that will get people to laugh or even engage with.
Facebook, for me, functions as a place to get information from, whether it is with the organizations I am involved in or keeping up with my friends and family. I never got into posting or sharing other posts. I made a Facebook after I was accepted into CNU and my primary reason for it was keeping up with the University and looking to find a freshman year roommate. The only activity I have on my Facebook now consists of keeping up with announcements from my sorority or updating my photos and accomplishments for friends and family. I’m also really bad at remembering important dates, such as birthdays, so I will go to people’s Facebook pages if I need to find that information out.
There is not a need to create a certain aesthetic on Facebook, compared to other platforms, which may be why my generation has started to move past Facebook. It doesn’t have any purpose if we don’t need to spend time taking the right picture with the right filter applied.

Instagram used to be my most used social media platform, however, within the past year my activity has steadily declined. I found myself going through my pictures and deleting almost all of them. I started a self-care journey with myself and found that I did not feel good enough to post pictures to keep up with everyone. I was not happy with how I looked and did not feel like I wanted certain photos of me on my feed. My self-care journey involved a weight loss component and just recently I started being happy with the process I’ve made, leading to me posting a few photos after months of being absent.

I think Instagram has contributed to so many mental health issues with young people, especially young girls. There is such pressure to have an aesthetically pleasing Instagram feed and I needed to get away from that for a little while. However, even when I came back to post a couple of pictures, I still felt like they needed to look a certain way to be ‘Instagram worthy’. If you don’t know those feelings I have, it just looks like I’ve just forgotten about posting, nothing too deep and/or personal. Being in a sorority, I’ve had girls believe I dropped letters because I stopped posting content. Again, another pressure to post certain content instead of what you want to post.
Snapchat is my most used social media platform and I enjoy it. I enjoy it because it’s easy to send snaps to friends and I honestly enjoy the filters (no shame). It helps me pass time or gives me a distraction when I need it. On my Snapchat story, I used to post anything I wanted. Now, I only post when I’m out doing something that I think is cool or something that happened and I thought it was funny.
 On Snapchat, I’m not as concerned about the content I post because it has a casual setting and does not require as much work to create a certain aesthetic. That being said, with the rise of private snap stories, there is an unspoken rule, like on any platform, of what is appropriate for everyone to see and what only a few close friends should see.
In general, I think my social media projects me as someone who doesn’t engage with it as often, due to my lack of original content and activity. It is only when you go below the surface that you see I don’t have the desire to engage in the work I feel is required to make my feed presentable and considered quality content. I think I am heavily influenced by the perceptions I feel people have/will have and that holds me back. To try and combat that, my solution is to remove myself from subjecting myself to any possible judgment. Through that removal, I've begun to see that I do not need to constantly upload just to keep up with my peers. #makesocialmediacasualagain