The first question posed, asks me to describe my personal relationship with social media. I fit into that category or major growth period for social media where I had a MySpace account for about 5 minutes before I was able to join Facebook in 2006, while in my first year of University. Initially, Facebook allowed (and encouraged) all users to share their every waking thought. I shudder every time those memories of regurgitation pop-up (I am comforted to know that there are at least a couple others in this group who will understand).
This relationship has transitioned, to where I still use Facebook, but I also use Instagram (and actually prefer it). For a while I controlled the accounts of other groups I was involved in as well. A few years ago, I begrudgingly joined SnapChat at the behest of my husband, and I have zero regrets. I actually wish more of my family used SnapChat so that I could share those quick pictures in the day to day, especially now that I have my daughter. As a teacher, SnapChat is frustrating because of how addicted students are to it. WhatsApp has also now become a professional necessity. However, this is where I draw the line with social media. I am not a user of the many other options out there, as I find the little I do is a major time commitment if I allow it to be already.
Facebook messenger is a major form of communication for my family. I have two sisters who live abroad and so international communication used to be quite difficult, seeing as my one sister moved to Spain over 20 years ago now. WhatsApp didn’t use to be as user friendly and widely used in Canada, as it was in Europe. So, messenger has allowed my family to remain connected even when distance separates us so vastly. I enjoy the ability to see updates on those I have grown distant from, even though I rarely post updates myself. My husband and I have also made the conscious decision to not post pictures and every living detail about our newborn on social media, purely for the fact that it is too easy to steal people’s identity from all those life facts being posted online.
A fun story about social media and my professional life, is that in my first year of teaching, a student took a picture of me bent over and shared it among their classmates. My principal was mortified to have to call me in to talk to me about this insensitive photo circulating. The really wild thing is that this was pre-SnapChat and so the visual was actually being sent as a hard copy. Lucky for my principal I laughed it off because as a first year teacher I had way bigger issues and concerns. I think about the concerns of new teachers where they have to worry about their school email being used to create accounts on websites that should not be mentioned here (and that I DO NOT want to link!). A couple of years ago, my school division also experienced being hacked and so that was a really new experience of handwriting assignments and worksheets. However, this highlighted the challenge my staff had, of how do we communicate?! We couldn’t use the regular channels of email, so WhatsApp became the go to, and we haven’t gone back.
Overall, in the positive or negative sense, social media is more of a positive. Or at least that is my current feelings towards it. I like the learning, the communicating and the creativity that stems from it. On the other hand, during recent historical events, there have been major moments of frustration with the lack of common sense, and certainly the lack of reliable and trustworthy information.
There are so many other topics that I could get into, however, I feel as though those topics may appear in future posts.