Week #3: The Way Social Media Influences Me

Whether we can admit it or not, social media influences everyone today. The astounding amount of information online comes at you like a freight train screeching to be heard. But how do we know which pieces of information to cling on to? How do you listen when everybody’s talking in a crowded room? Obviously, it is impossible to hear every conversation, so how do you choose which ones interest you?

One can argue that social media is part of the problem, but if you learn how to use it to your advantage, I’d say its part of the solution. Over the last week I have been trying to follow twitter websites that collect certain topics or clusters of information in one place. For example, if I was interested in how Brazilians feel about the crisis in Egypt, I could go to Trendsmap and click on that topic hovering over Brazil- or any topic that happens to be a popular tweet in Brazil (it would help to know Portuguese probably). I don’t really consider myself a skilled user of every type of social media, considering I just started all of this 3 weeks ago, but I have always (just since the internet has been high speed) used multiple sites strictly for the purpose of learning more about a person, place, event, or social topic.

I think the main way I use social media in my everyday life is not as much to find out what other people are saying about something, but more to keep in touch with friends and catch up on current popular events. Maybe this is because I haven’t found that site that grabs me by shoulders and shakes me saying “I have every opinion you could possible want to read right here on my page”, but right now I focus more on the entertainment side of social media and try to form my own opinions about current events.

One way I waste a lot of time on social media sites is finding entertaining videos, pictures or articles, and pass them along to friends I think would enjoy them with the hopes that I can put a smile on their face and make them laugh.

I sent this picture of Jim Carrey in "The Yes Man" to a friend just to say Hi!

I love to find videos or pictures that will evoke an old memory reminding a friend of a fun time we had in the past.

I really make an effort to stay in touch with old friends, especially those who were on my volleyball team in college. I usually focus my attention on their blogs so I can find out what they are up to these days. It is really awesome to almost hear their personalities coming out of the screen while I read what they write. It gives me a sense that we are together again. As a psychology student in undergrad, I love to hear just about anyone’s perspective because I like to learn about other people and understand their personalities. I love to read blogs by people that have interesting or original hobby like being vegan (which I actually tried and loved and will blog about it soon) so I can learn and understand their purpose for sticking with it. I guess this is the part of my personality I describe as the social chameleon.

All this effort to keep up with friends and maintain my presence in the “real world” make me a very busy person, so in my down time, I like to catch up on the things I missed. I remember back in middle school when everyone would talk about a certain game or TV show that was on the night before, and if you hadn’t seen it, you spent the day in loserville excluded from the hot topic for the day. Not anymore. Now, I can catch up on anything I missed on my own time, and I can do it in bed! Just this last weekend I missed the beginning of the Super bowl because of traffic. Nooo problem. Any commercial I missed, I could watch later on YouTube, and if I missed any part of the game, before I could ask what happened, my phone was blowin’ up with facebook status updates.

I guess what I am saying is that social media- even though I don’t consider myself an avid user- pretty much dominates my life anyway. Any type of question I have, I can google it, go to twitter, youtube videos or hulu television shows in a few clicks. If I want to know more about Justin Bieber after seeing the preview for his new movie, I can learn about his entire life from his full bio on Wikipedia, watch his music videos and childhood videos on youtube, buy his music on itunes and watch his teenage fans drool over his every move just by typing #justinbieber on twitter.

This just goes to show that I am easily influenced by that freight train of information coming my way, I just need to learn to focus my energy on the subjects that really interest me and I will have access to a world of knowledge and expertise about any issues. With all the different social media sources, it’s easy to learn everything you need to know about any topic from any vantage point you can think of.