Growing Up With Social Media: LJ1

            At 24, I’ve spent more of my time alive with access to social media than without. My first social media site I had access to was MySpace, at 7 or 8 years old. My access to MySpace was rightfully limited but it was my first interaction with social media and HTML coding. Since then, I’ve obviously grown and learned a lot and interact with the internet much differently  

            There are many things that I ensure I am careful with while using my socials, which you should consider as well if you’re reading this post.

• Be mindful of TMI, not everyone is interested or needs to know about your personal problems.
• Before thinking of saying anything negative, consider that there is a person on the other side of that username. Be nice.
• What goes on the internet, stays there forever, and everyone you know has access to that too. Be mindful of that.
• Not everyone is who they say they are.
• Pick a username you wouldn’t mind being stuck with, sometimes you can’t change them. You don’t wanna be stuck with “PrincessXoXo123” forever.
• Don’t exist chronically online, there is a life outside of the internet. Spending your life angry about other people’s “hot takes” every day is just not healthy. Step away and ask yourself, “does this really affect me?”

     I don’t think it’s much of a hot button topic anymore but it is something I find interesting. A few years ago there was a lot of talk about the concept of selfies. Many people had negative things to say about the vanity of taking a picture of yourself and posting it. It never made sense to me, the thought process of “how dare you feel good about yourself and want to share that.”

    The express purpose of social media is to be social and share things going on in your life  I think “selfies” are great, (although, I hate the word selfie.) Being confident enough to take a picture of yourself and put that on the internet is great. And taking pictures of yourself doing something or being somewhere isn’t new, just the method of doing so is different as well as the ease of sharing. Take pictures of yourself, do it for the memories.