Linkedin as a Social Media Network

   Social media for most people is a way to connect with friends and family and stay up to date with their lives during the changing circumstances of your own. The concept of social media is that one joins a social media website where you can upload different information about yourself like pictures, contact info, daily updates from you, or content you find enjoyable. Of course the content that can be uploaded and the rules, concrete and unspoken, differ from one social media site to another.

   Recently I have been introduced to a somewhat different Social media site named LinkedIn, which is much more professional than sites like Facebook or Tumblr which are the main sites I use. LinkedIn is mostly used to upload and showcase yourself, all past job experiences, current skills, current career, and resumes online for potential employers to see. At first glance it does seem like LinkedIn is more of a job site than a social media site, but one of the main aspects of LinkedIn is networking which of course is what social media is all about on some level. LinkedIn allows you to make your own profile and add connections, similarly to adding friends on Facebook and getting followers or becoming a follower on other social media sites. LinkedIn relies heavily on the notion of the six degrees of separation, which states that any one person is separated from any other person in the world by at most six additional people in a social network. This means that in theory on a site like LinkedIn you have the potential to make valuable connections to people in fields or careers that you may want to get into. Therefore, if you do connect with these people you will have a person inside the company you want to work for to help you get your foot in the door for a job at that same company.

   I for one am glad to know about this social media site, as I believe it can open many doors for people wanting to find jobs that they may not have even known existed. As a student, I also think that it is a useful tool for finding internships or co-ops, which are important for most college students like myself to gain experience before heading into the job market upon graduation.

Link to my LinkedIn Profile

The Social Media Dilemma: Addiction or Past Time

 In today's day in age social media is probably the most viewed type of pages on the Internet next to video pages like you tube and Netflix. I myself only know a handful of people who don’t use some sort of social media, and most of them don’t use it because frankly they never learned to use computers as kids and have a hard time using them now. Many of us wake up to Facebook or Twitter to find out daily news or just to see how friends are doing, then as the day goes on maybe spend our time between classes or work on Tumblr or Instagram looking through post just to burn some time before checking back on Facebook at the end of the day to see whats new. At least, that’s usually how I use my social media, rather heavily I suppose. In any case, recently I was challenged to go 24 hours without social media to see if I could and how it would feel. Honestly I think I may do this anyway some days or at least go close to a day at some points so I didn’t think to much of the challenge but I was somewhat surprised at some points of my day during.

Facebook, and Tumblr are my main social media sites, with some Ifunny every once in a while for laughs. I dislike Instagram and Vine for how immature, sexualized, and down right dumb my generation and below seem on it. Twitter on the other hand I just don’t like anywhere near as much as Facebook, it seems more disconnected. So keeping in mind I only needed to avoid the first 3 sites, my day started out with me resisting checking my Facebook notifications which spent the day flashing at the very top of my phone screen taunting me to log on. Still in the beginning avoiding the 3 sites I use didn’t seem so tough. Around noon that day though, I started to feel it creeping up on me, the boredom. I ran out of stuff to watch on Netflix, I didn't have any video games to occupy me due to having beaten them all, and I was starting to consider logging on and quitting the challenge. In the end though a few of my cousins decided to go to a river nearby to hangout which got me through most of the day. When I got back home I was able to get through the rest of the night just texting with some of the people I usually talk to on Facebook. So in the end it didn’t turn out to be so bad going 24 hours without social media. The following are shots from the river I was at, I thought they looked really nice.

In the end I'm not sure how the experience makes me feel about social media, but I don’t think its as addicting as some people say, at least not to me. The thing is people like stuff that’s fun, and social media may not be laugh out loud rolling on the floor fun, but its an entertaining way to see what your friends and acquaintances are up to and get to some news throughout the day. Plus when you have a schedule like mine, where my friends are either living in other states and countries, or they're busy in school or working when I'm not, social media is a great way to feel like your with them for a while. Mostly I get this feeling through group chatting on Facebook and tagging each other on fun stuff that interests us there or on Tumblr. Sure we could text, or if the time is appropriate Skype, but if you cant meet up, sometimes you cant Skype either, and texting just isn’t as expressive as Facebook is honestly. But if you have the chance to see your friends in real life, or if you can get out of the house and do anything fun with anyone you like I think social media becomes redundant, like it was when I was at the river. It just depends on whether you can do something else to occupy yourself more enjoyably than being online, and if you cant I don't think theirs anything wrong with spending a day on a social media site, or even a few days. It's all about balancing out your life and time, if you feel like social media is the only fun thing you can do or the only place you know people, than you might have bigger issues in your life than just a social media addiction.