Social Media Habits (Blog #1)

Social Media throughout the past decade has played very different types of roles in my life. 

To understand how my relationship with social media has grown, we’re going to have to go back to the start! In middle school, my main objective of having Instagram was to have as many likes and followers on Instagram as possible. Popularity was something that was so important during that time, and that applies to social media as well. I quickly learned which personas were liked more than others. I learned how to leverage this and portray a certain facade on social media. My main objective on Instagram was to look good and be well-liked.

My Instagram feed in high school

As I entered my first couple of years of high school my approach to Instagram was very much so reliant on what other people thought of me. There was much more creativity on my feed and my content. Although, most of those types of pictures were of scenery, or pictures that showed off my lifestyle, and less of me. The pictures I would post of myself were typically of me perfectly posed and I would only post them if they were sending the right message of how I wanted the world to perceive me. Towards the end of high school, my Instagram became much more real as I grew into being more confident in my skin. My Instagram began to fill up with pictures of my real life, concerts, fun events, family and friends. I was still rarely posting pictures with myself in them, but I was content with showing my loved ones off to the world. While my Instagram began to feel real and untouched, I was still very concerned with the aesthetic of my feed. All my photos had to be edited with the same Vsco filters to fit in with the vibe I wanted to portray.

By the time I entered college, I finally had a fully healthy relationship with Instagram. I was okay posting pictures of myself where I didn’t look perfect. I realized there is much more benefit in posting a group photo of the people I love just because it's fun, even if I didn’t look as attractive as I would have liked. Interestingly enough, I would still only post certain pictures after applying certain filters to the picture to keep Instagram aesthetic, but the root was from a place of wanting to express my creativity. My current relationship with Instagram today consists of the same lax approach.

An example of leaving a photo of an ex up, but changing the caption

Another weird social media habit I’ve observed that is worth noting is the phenomenon of deleting pictures after exiting a relationship. For some people deleting pictures of an ex can be cathartic. For others, it's better to leave up pictures with their ex and edit all the captions to bitter phrases that roast their ex (this one feels especially toxic to me). However, those people that want to leave some of their Instagram pictures is taught that there’s something wrong with that. If people do leave pictures of an ex up there’s an unspoken code that you should only leave a couple photos of an ex up as long as you delete the majority of them, and delete the captions of the remaining photos. 

In my own life, after ending a long term relationship, I wanted to leave a few photos up. Knowing that this was a controversial move, I still followed the unspoken rule of deleting all but a few pictures that were posted a year or two before the breakup. These pictures were of really happy times and gave an authentic view of what my life used to look like in previous years. Over the next year after the breakup, I would continue to have people mention to me that they noticed that I still had some pictures up with my ex. Side note, this section of my Instagram was so far down my feed you would have to scroll past at least 22 rows of pictures to get to a single picture of my ex. Having that many people comment on me still having pictures up with an ex made me think, why do people care if you have pictures from past relationships up on Instagram? Should you be obligated to delete pictures off Instagram out of respect for your ex? Does social media conduct need to be talked about with both partners during a breakup? 

On another note...

In my opinion, while Instagram has so many different features and functions than other platforms and is a staple of my social media, Twitter is just so much simpler. Twitter has always just been easier to use, easier to manage, and easier to be fulfilled by. After first making my Instagram in middle school I would tweet whenever about whatever. It was very much still used as a means for me to connect with friends. There was never much thought or planning that went into Twitter. It was just my thoughts.

As life went on and became more complicated, so did my Twitter. Later in high school, I found that while I would still engage with friends by direct messaging them, the audience of my tweets was definitely not my friends. The content I created would be more concerned with what strangers who stumble upon my tweet would think. A goal of mine was always to go viral on Twitter. That affected the way I tweeted. My approach was to create relatable content that followed the current trends of memes on Twitter.  

In college, my approach to Twitter became much more relaxed. It's now become a social media I don’t care that much about keeping up with or producing content on. I use Twitter once or twice a week whenever I want to laugh. All the tweets I engage with are typically always tweeted by strangers, despite me following mostly only my friends. The main reason I use Twitter is because of the two or three meme group chats I’m a part of on Twitter. That’s where the social component comes back in.

Currently, I’m in my second job working as a Social Media Manager. This is the one area where my old approach to social media has been the most beneficial. While I used to be a perfectionist on my own social media, I've now learned how to harness that and use it in a professional setting. This makes me a better advertiser for the Office of Admission here at CNU. Since my personal social media habits have grown so much and I learned how to be genuine online, this too became a skill I used in the professional setting. I learned how to mix the perfectionist and genuine approaches to social media to create both professional and authentic content.  

Overall I’m thankful for social media for its ability to connect communities and foster genuine relationships. This can only be done of course when you are being your authentic self on social media. I’m also appreciative of all the opportunities social media has given me and the lessons I’ve learned through these different platforms. #Blessed