Going to school very far from home, I owe a lot to social media. I do not get to see my family or friends for months at a time. However, due to social media, I still feel very connected to their lives. I can see pictures of them and interact by posting on each other’s walls or sharing funny and interesting articles.  I credit social media as being the tie that keeps me connected with the people whom I may not see often but care a lot about. Overall, I love social media for giving me a glimpse into people’s lives and in the simplest function serving as a reminder to pick up the phone, shoot a text, or interact through social media with people who I cannot see often. This tweet definitely describes how I feel about social media:

we used to feel like we weren't living if we spent too much time on social media.

now we feel like we aren't living if we're not on S.M.

— Yousef Saleh Erakat (@fouseyTUBE) January 31, 2016

According to data by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, two thirds of adults use social media as a way to stay connected. However, at Ethan Zuckerman suggests in his book Rewire, the fact that social media and the internet gives us access to virtually all information actually makes us more likely to only use social media for connecting with people we already know and searching for information that we want to find, not necessarily the information or the people that we should find. This lesson is important to remember in a world of endless knowledge. We have this great platform, let’s use it to its fullest.

The ability today to have endless information is hindering our exposure to needed information – a compelling lesson from @EthanZ #NHsmc

— Kelsey Adams (@adamskelseyr) January 31, 2016