If Social Media were a chocolate, it would be Bittersweet

Posted on by Nicholas Fathergill

I first made a Facebook account when I was 14 years old.  A couple years later, in January of 2012, I decided to hop on the Twitter bandwagon as well.  My life has never been the same.

As much as I love social media and all the information I can easily access simply from an app, it’s clearly a double-edged sword.  There’s no way to discuss the benefits of lightning-fast apps like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram without diving into the drawbacks as well.

As I gained friends and followers across the three afore-mentioned sites, I became more involved.  I tried to update my status and change pictures fairly often to reflect the person I was becoming.  This was great.  The feeling of posting a tweet that eventually garners dozens of favorites/likes (depending on how long ago) is incredible.

For example, the above tweet was really well received by my followers.  Coming off of an internship covering the Little League World Series – baseball is my favorite sports – it was really incredible to see how happy people were for me.  This was one of the highs I’ve ever had using social media.

However, it’s not all fun and games.  Having social media at your fingertips every day really takes away from living your life sometimes.  On countless occasions, I have found myself idly scrolling through Twitter while something really cool or important was going on around me, like a live sports game or – I can admit it – a class in which I should be taking notes.

The above tweet, right after Prince died, is one of the such instances.  It’s really difficult to remain focused all the time when such distractions exist to pry you away.  Therefore, for all the benefits of social media, the drawbacks are certainly plenty as well.

 

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