This blog is an experience I share of my use of the social media apps. Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp. The most commonly used apps in our time. I m not writing about Instagram or Pinterest as I don't use much of them. Let us begin with Twitter. Twitter is still that foreign land which we don't know much about. This I say because of random questions to the current youth asking them if they are on Twitter. Some say they are but they still don't know what to do with it. Many are still on it. For me it is interesting being on Twitter. My personal favorite. You can ramble a lot though of course in 140 characters. You can interact even with complete strangers, on issues ranging from gizmos to weather to politics to academics, you name it. You get the latest updates on all kind of news thanks to all the twitter handles you follow. All of this in real time. Facebook is more like the party you come to, you hang out a bit and then leave. Not really being in the party yet not out of it. Though over the years I have realised that being too personal here doesn't work, for me at least. So my use has been replaced more with sharing some interesting information with everyone on my list.
The more challenging one so far has been Whatsapp. Especially being on groups. It is like one of those compulsory lectures where you have to 'listen' to the content of the session. Here the tsunami of messages. In that you have to make sense of what is relevant to you perhaps. Not to speak of the spam that flows in these groups. But yes I couldn't do without these groups either. I have exited groups and gone back to them. Taking breaks and going back.
There is one thing I have learnt, being on social media. It is never going to be the same like having a plain face to face conversation. Even though I know what my friends do in their lives through Facebook or Twitter nothing is better than that idyllic conversation over a cup of coffee with that expression or emotion in a face to face talk. In that sense the social media can be very 'unsocial'. It is a simulation of a contact with the person as if face to face, but it ends there, at the simulation. Social media though leaves you with the space to choose what you wish to hear. So you will have to filter through the many messages and look for those messages that make sense to you. That is the mantra of social media. I think it is going to exist for quite sometime and is not exiting our minds. Not yet.
image source: www.justretweet.com
