For me, social media has become a huge part of my life over the years as I imagine it has for most people. I wake up in the morning and check Twitter first for any new news that is happening around the world. I actually don’t follow many news pages on social media because the people that I follow are always very quick to re-tweet any big information that I may need to know about. I then move on to Instagram to check on how everyone else’s lives are going or at least how they want me to think it is going. After all of that is out of the way, I start my day by putting on some music to get me energized for what lies ahead.
I began my day by going to the gym. This is one place I would think I wouldn’t be on social media, but I always find myself mindlessly scrolling my feed in between sets. Usually my social media consist of the same old thing every day, but in recent weeks there has been a flood of posts about the fires that are consuming Australia. Almost every major news page is posting about these devastating fires and often provide links to donate and help out in any way that we can. One that I see being re-tweeted a lot is from ABC news. I find it amazing that all different countries are coming together on this matter and even sending over volunteers to help, but the biggest focus is on the animals.
After the gym, I came home and got ready for school. I often don’t have much time to be on my phone during this time, but after getting to class I found myself checking social media one last time before the class started. Fast forward to getting home from class and this is where the most time was spent on my phone. Should I be getting ahead on homework and stop procrastinating? Yes. For the sake of this assignment though, I let myself have a little bit more time on my phone.
Until having to log everything I was reading and looking at, I didn’t realize how much information I was taking in daily. I mostly follow pages that bring positivity to my day and choose not to follow a lot of news pages because if I’m being honest, they’re quite sad most of the time. With that being said, I know that if a story is big enough, I will definitely be hearing about it.
One person that I do follow is Donald Trump and let me tell you, that is an adventure. I will not get into any political talks, but I will say that I am glad that I follow him. Although he might put too much on social media, I think it is great that he is very open about what is going on and keeps us (kind of) in the loop. He is the only “credible” media source that I currently follow.
Overall, I found this assignment to be very enlightening and judging by my screen time of 6 hours per day, I think I may need to cut back a bit. Our world today seems to revolve around social media and immediate gratification. Unfortunately, I see it changing who we are as people and as a society. Social media is amazing in it’s own way, but I think it is all about finding the balance between it and the real world.
