Julia Dallas

I grew up with social media. The first social platform I used was Facebook, but I remember when Snapchat and Instagram stories first came out. When I first used social media, it was for entertainment and keeping up with friends. Which was pretty much what everyone my age was using it for. I still use it for those things but now I also use it to promote my articles on Twitter, connect professionally on LinkedIn and keep up with news on Tik Tok. Instagram has changed dramatically from when it first started. It used to be a place to show silly pictures, quotes, and random things throughout your day. Now it more revenue based and less about the fun. I do freelance modeling and often find photographers to work with on Instagram, which is a positive aspect of social media, but sometimes I miss how carefree Instagram was. Some negative aspects of social media are that it is very time consuming and distracting. I am often looking at my phone when I could be more productive and more in the moment. Social media also shows what your friends are doing 24/7 which often comes with FOMO.

Based off the data from the Pew Research and Internet Trends report I found it interesting that Pinterest and Facebook are still very popular social media sites. I never hear of people using Pinterest anymore and I thought Facebook was dying down. When measuring who uses social media based off age, gender, education, and income, I noticed that of the people who made less than $30,000 a year 70% used Facebook and 30% used Instagram. Maybe this correlates as to why Instagram is seeming more bougie lately. It seems like Instagram went from a fun app to a place to show off wealth. Another chart showed that all age groups except for those ages 18 to 29 were consuming more social media. It appears that ages 18 to 29 are starting to consume social media less. From what I’ve noticed among my friends, social media is slowly going down in popularity. I’m 24 and I think people who grew up with social media are getting tired of it. Tik Tok was close to restarting social media, but I see less people using it now than before. Being carefree on social media is starting to come back and I’m not sure if social media will be seen as an important professional standard in the future with brands and personal accounts.

Aspects of social media I am interested in exploring further after week one of this class are how brands can connect with their consumers in a more personal way. I think brands are starting to hire younger people and realize that looking professional on social media won’t get them more engagement but connecting with the younger audiences will. I also look forward to what the predicted future of social media is and how that will influence media.