Taylor

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Challenges During Implementation

The first challenge I foresee for Epsilon Nu Tau Eta Chapter when deciding if and what recommendations to implement is follow through. The entire reason the social media accounts are in such poor shape currently is because the two people that are in charge of the social media accounts haven’t given a crap about it. If I think something needs to change, I know that I am going to have to speak up and step up when no one else has the focus and energy to starting using our social media accounts effectively.

Another challenge that Epsilon Nu Tau Eta Chapter faces is that it doesn’t know it’s purpose through social media. Creating a vision and a purpose, curated from our core organizational goals, is the very first step in beginning the long journey to becoming a social organization. Right now, the organization overall lacks the knowledge and the fundamental principles of mass collaboration.

The social media manager, or what we call the Marketing Chair, has completely failed at their duties for social media. They had the chance to ask for help and delegate responsibilities throughout their process in that position, they chose not to. The first step that I am going to personally take as a member of the organization is to formally ask them to step down from their position so that someone that will use our social media pages to effectively recruit and grow our online and offline community can step in place and pick up the slack.

I was one of those people who would push aside social media and only use it as entertainment or an online scrapbook. Through taking BIS 315, completing Hootsuite, and reading The Social Organization, I have come to the realization that social media is a fantastic and basically free tool that can be used to grow community engagement within an organization.

I have also come to terms with the fact that I am probably going to have to take a leadership role within my organization and help them implement all of the ideas I have come up with throughout completing this course. This class has given me the patience and the know how to successfully implement the social media strategy that I created for my organization.

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Social Media Content: How to Use it Effectively.

Content plays a crucial role in achieving key business goals. Creating and curating effective content will build long-term relationships with an ever-growing audience. Content posted on social media accounts should be relevant to the interest of the audience that your organization is trying to reach. Also, it should be consistent and cohesive while telling the story of the organization.

The best way to begin creating a content strategy for your organization is by following the steps below:

·     Research organizations current content and analyze how it is being consumed by the targeted audience

·     Know what your target market is among each specific platform

·     Create a lot of content based on the organization's specific goals and objectives

·     Make plans for the description of content, to make day-to-day posting easier

·     Set goals, content performance goals and specific goals for your organization’s content

Facebook audience incites and twitters analytics to identify your target audience demographics, among the different social media sites your organization uses. This will ensure that the content that your organization posts, are reaching the audience it’s trying to influence. Choosing who your target audience is, is almost as important as creating the content in which you post.

Content strategies shouldn’t be the exact same among different social media platforms. They aren’t and shouldn’t be used the same way. For example, Facebook and Twitter are better used for educational posts, and Instagram users are more interested in inspirational posts. Another way to specify a content strategy is to post polls on different social media platforms asking what type of contents those followers would like to see in the future. Also, using competitor analysis to see if maybe your organization can provide more inspiration for your audience, just make sure to not copy!

Making plans for distribution can be a large task for a small organization, because of the lack of members to contribute on the day-to-day posting. Tools like Hootsuite can help with this, by automatically posting pre-created content at specific times on different platforms.  When planning content distribution ask your organization; “What types of content have worked best on which platforms? And, what is the upcoming and current content trends among your target audience?

Creating a content calendar and using it efficiently can help an organization by reminding what and when to post. Make sure the calendar is easily accessible for those who need it and don’t plan too far in advance. It should be a constantly evolving document containing planned and scheduled social media posts for all of the social media platforms your organization takes advantage of. Another way you can stay organized is to keep a larger, less detailed calendar with all events.

The weekly content calendar should be separated by specific social media platforms by setting specific times content is set to go out. Type and the specific content should be separated into different columns, to make the overall calendar easier to read. There should be specific texts to copy for each post which includes branded and engaging hashtags, and emojis if appropriate. A link to the content that’ll be posted, should be on the calendar as well.

Reposting content is only acceptable on certain types of platforms. Twitter is the most acceptable platform for reposting content because tweets are only popular for a certain amount of time and they aren’t seen by everyone. Facebook is less acceptable, and LinkedIn is even less acceptable for reposting and re-using content and past posts. Content should never be re-used on Snapchat or Instagram to protect your organization from sounding repetitive and annoying your followers.

Curated content is gathered from trusted sources that are relevant to the industry. Created content is produced from within an organization. A successful mix is normally about 40% created and 60% curated. Make sure when curating content to use and share content from trusted sources only, it can be a great tool that balances self-promotional posts but paying attention to what is posted is important.  

Becoming a social organization can be a difficult and prolonged task. Community involvement is very important but can be difficult to have. When the community your organization created, is engaging in the content you share, it can be rewarding. That doesn’t necessarily mean that your organization is a truly social organization. However, when content is being shared, curated, and created effectively, an organization is on their way to becoming a social organization in no time.

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How to Build an Online Community: Part 2

When thinking about growing an online community, the first task that needs to be completed is asking the organization leaders the right questions. The quality of followers is more important than the quantity. One way to do this is by reaching out to the offline followers of the organizations. This can be through offering incentives to join the online community, the way that I am going to suggest that Epsilon Nu Tau Eta Chapter does this is through “like, share, and comment”, “retweet”, or hashtag on Instagram contests. Hootsuite also mentions hosting events as a great way to build followers, ENT Eta Chapter already holds events like this through the recruitment weeks, but I am going to suggest that the organization does this all school year long. This will keep the existing followers interested, and gain new followers throughout the school year, with hopes of higher numbers of people becoming interested in joining.

Another way of growing an online community is by collaborating with like-minded businesses. ENT Eta Chapter already does this offline by working closely with the Entrepreneurship office and the New Venture Competition, which is represented by the photo I added above. The next steps needed to take with those partnerships are taking them more online by sharing their content and asking them to do the same. This will benefit all organizations in the end.

There are four different types of engagement that happens between members of the community and an organization (or business). The first happens during discussions and sharing content. Customer support queries, which doesn’t necessarily translate to the type of organization I chose. However, it is important to stay in contact with potential new members that reach out to our organization through our social media profiles. The third type is addressing positive and negative sentiments that happen on social media sites. This type of engagement can be helpful or just add fuel to an online fire, which isn’t helpful for any organization. The way ENT Eta Chapter handles that type of engagement right now is just fine. The last type is proactive engagement is when a member of the organization seeking out and responding to mentions of the brand.

One of the first steps that I will recommend for ENT Eta Chapter is to open a LinkedIn. Since the organization is by definition is an academic business fraternity, the fact that the organization doesn’t have a business LinkedIn page, is actually quite shocking. The organization also needs to have more involvement across the major social media sites, period. This will immediately help build the online community because people will be interested in the things that the organization shares.

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How to Build an Online Community

The first step an organization should take when thinking about growing their online community is creating a purposeful vision statement. This vision statement will provide two purposes; it will articulate the importance of community-based collaboration and it will identify significant opportunities for the organization to help move towards its goals. It is important to understand when community collaboration is appropriate and where it is valued. When developing a vision statement, it’s also important to understand the goals and culture of the organization. “Developing a vision is a creative activity … and getting to a valuable, insightful, and inspiring outcome can be a challenge.”

The general goal of creating the vision statement is to capture value from a collection of people who have assembled loosely around a general interest. Such as people gather around Epsilon Nu Tau because they are interested in entrepreneurship. When an organization needs deep analysis for a bigger issue, community collaboration isn’t the best way to achieve that. Also, where there is proprietary information, is another situation that open community collaboration wouldn’t be effective but could be dangerous to sensitive information.

Knowing when community collaboration needs to be combined with other forms of collaboration is key to growing a business community. Organizations that pay attention to what is happening on social media are the ones that understand who their target audience is and that is a fantastic way to add value to social media collaboration. Targeting a specific audience that is directly interested in your organization can help with overall community collaboration.

Culture directly refers to the shared beliefs, norms, and values held by members of a group. Understanding this can help facilitate community collaboration in aiding organizational goals. Social media can be simply an inconvenient distraction when it isn’t being used effectively. This is why it is super important to develop a specific vision and purpose that keeps members and the community in check on what the overall goal of collaborating is.

Having the right attitude is the key to life for just about anything and building an online community isn’t any different. There is a model of attitudes called “Six F” and the attitudes are folly, fearful, flippant, formulating, forging and fusing. Having a folly attitude towards social media basically means you view it as simply entertaining, with no real use for it in the business side of life. Before I started taking BIS 315, that’s how I viewed social media. My personal Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/taylor.rainier is a great place to see that, I share things that I am interested in and I only use it for entertainment purposes.

When someone is fearful of social media, they fear that adding social media to the basic business model would add the potential for undesirable behavior among employees. Flippant is almost the exact opposite of fearful, but business owners who look at social media with this approach think it is pointless. Rather than running their social media pages with a strategic approach, they are tactical, and they wait for collaboration to happen instead of making it happen. The organization I picked for my semester-long project, Epsilon Nu Tau Eta Chapter, uses this approach currently. We have a social media chair, but we don’t use our pages and resources to their fullest potential.

Formulating is when the leadership within the organization recognizes the value of community collaboration and the need to be organized and strategic in its use. This outlook normally happens in the beginning stages of building a strong social organization. When an organization begins the forging phase, it starts to integrate productive online community collaboration into their daily work lives. The most advanced attitude, which is also fairly rare, is fusing. This is when an organization participates in the attitude of a truly social organization.

When crafting a vision for an organization, the involvement of members from all parts of the organization is circuital during the creation of the vision. The first task that should happen when developing a vision is to focus on the organization's original goals and strategies. When a vision is clear, gaining control and taking leadership positions becomes easier.

Strategy always begins with a purpose. A well-formed purpose addresses a recognized problem and answers frequently asked questions. A vision for Epsilon Nu Tau Eta Chapter might look something like this, “Engage entrepreneurially minded individuals by encouraging collaboration amongst one another, while reminding every member of the purpose of our organization and the benefits of joining it.”

Power and potential value of the purpose of an organization can be assessed by asking yourself a few questions. “What’s in it for me?” Magnetize people by making themselves ask this question when they read the vision statement. “What’s in it for the organization?” The answer to this question should be easy to answer, after reading the vision statement. There should be low community risk associated with the vision statement. It should be measurable, meaning the community value can be clearly assessed. The last assessment is if the vision statement facilitates evolution. Businesses and organizations should always be evolving, the vision statement should assist the organization in naturally building on as time goes on.

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Big Data’s Security Hacks

Big data isn’t always as secure as its lead on to be. Not even the government's data is secure. In fact, especially not the government’s data. They are using servers that are antiquated and they aren’t ahead of the hacking issue, that we are facing every day in the world today. As a business or a customer, everyone should be aware of this so they can be prepared in the event of a mass hacking. The federal government’s employee’s information was hacked, everything from their fingerprints to their extremely personal information. The government has no way to retrieve that information from the hackers.

Business owners, data can be used in a competitive market to help drive sales to the next level. Make sure the data that is captured is protected, so your company owns it. The data you collect can be protected through proper policies and contract measures, your business should own everything from a legal standpoint. This just protects your platform so, in case of a data breach, you are protected correctly.

From a legal standpoint, data should be maintained as a trade secret and there should be contracts in place to protect your trade secret. The use of contracts can set hard guidelines on who has access to the data and how they use and/or share it. There should be contracts with not only vendors but also employees. In employee contracts and handbooks, it should be clear that the company owns company information and data. The police should also be involved, especially if it is understood on how much data is being collected because the police force understands the law behind data collection and how to protect your customers in the event of a hacking.

Business owners need to be ahead of the hackers. The owners need to ask themselves; How likely is my business to be hacked? What would hackers want from my data? How much is it going to be cost to clean up the mess after the business is hacked? What security measures can I put in place to protect my business and my customers?

Businesses, consider your privacy policies. There is a solid history of the courts honoring businesses privacy policies when bankruptcy or buyouts happen. If you are a business owner and you are reading this post the number one thing I want you to take from this post is to consider and revise all of your contracts, with the thought of data privacy at the forefront. More specifically vendor agreements, make sure to outline what can and cannot be done with the data that is collected from your customers and who owns it. Also, make sure to consider the security of the facilities that your business's data is stored. One reason a customer could choose to use your services over another business could be the security they feel when giving their information to you.

Consumers, you should be aware that any information that you are giving to any business or company, it could be compromised. Even including fingerprints! This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t ever share your information or go off the grid in fear of having your information stolen. What I am trying to get across to you is to be choosy with whom you share your private information with. I understand that if you want to work for the government, you have no choice but to give them just about everything, but you can choose where you consume products based on who has better consumer protection policies if the protection of your information is important to you.

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Businesses That Succeed at Social Media

One small business that has impressed me with their social media presence is Electric Kitsch which is a record store in Bay City, MI. Their brand is cohesive among their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. Their posts are about the main thing that they sell, records. The pictures that are on all three accounts are the same all across, which is positive because that means that no matter what social media a customer uses, they see the same picture across all, which will drive business because repetitiveness is one way to get customers to think about your business and come in. Another thing this small business is doing is driving in-person sales is posting when the store is having sales! Which they do quite often, that gets customers through the door. I know that when I have extra cash and I walk into a record shop, I’m not necessarily going in for one item. If I see that there is a sale, I’ll walk in and spend more than I would have if I had not seen that post about the sale in the first place. This is such a small thing, but it makes a huge difference in in-store sales. Above I posted screenshots of all three of their social media accounts to show how cohesive they look. Their brand’s logo is the profile picture on all three, and generally, the same photos are being used across all three accounts. 

https://www.facebook.com/pg/ElectricKitsch/posts/?ref=page_internal

 https://twitter.com/ElectricKitsch

https://www.instagram.com/electrickitschbaycity/

Another organization that has used their social media platforms fairly successfully is the Entrepreneurship Fraternity, Epsilon Nu Tau. During national conference two years ago, it was decided that the fraternity as a whole was lacking in social media presence. The first thing that happened was someone within the national board was assigned to the task of maintaining the social media accounts and they were expected to do exactly that. During the conference, all of the different chapters contributed to a list of goals in order to make Epsilon Nu Tau more known. Mostly for recruitment purposes but also to keep all of the members active, involved, and interested. The biggest challenge the organization faces is gaining followers and getting our organization more known, outside of the communities that have chapters in them. The national board hasn’t quite fixed that problem yet, but I can see specifically on Facebook that they are trying. All through the summer, there have been posts of inspirational articles and fraternity updates with hashtags that get the organizations name out there. I also posted screenshots of their social media accounts, the cohesiveness of the accounts isn't as spot on as Electric Kitsch, but it is getting there. I do enjoy the posts about entrepreneurship, it keeps me informed about the rapidly changing field. One thing that has to be improved is this business fraternities LinkedIn because that is one of the best places to connect with other businesses and organizations, which will help get the fraternity more known. 

https://www.facebook.com/pg/EpsilonNuTau/posts/?ref=page_internal https://twitter.com/EpsilonNuTau https://www.instagram.com/epsilonnutau/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/epsilon-nu-tau-fraternity-inc./

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If I were a caring Social Media Consultant for Myself, My Social Media’s wouldn’t completely suck.

If I were to act as a social media consultant for myself the first thing I would do is to create a brand. Right now, the only social media that I use every day is Facebook and Instagram, and they are both very obviously mine. However, I don’t really have a following, so I don’t believe that my brand is strong. To create a better brand, I would post certain things at certain times to ensure they are being viewed continuously. I honestly haven’t done much to my online brand thus far, other than hitting the little button on Instagram that posts the same post on Facebook.

One way I would improve my professional social media presence is, I would update and use LinkedIn and Twitter on a regular basis. I pretty much post regularly on Facebook/Instagram already, but LinkedIn and Twitter are my weakness and I know that. Right now, Twitter is the hot topic, people still use Facebook, but much less than a few years ago.

One thing I would like to change/fix about my social media accounts is that I would like to be less opinionated about politics. Ranting on Facebook doesn’t really help anyone in the long run, yeah correcting my close-minded relatives makes me feel better, but it makes family dinners super awkward and doesn’t make me sound very professional. Something else I would like to do is share more content. Not necessarily my own content, because I honestly don’t think anyone wants to hear my opinion, but the content should be helpful. I share cool articles that I come across on Facebook, but I should go out and find information that I feel my “followers” would benefit from consuming.

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Hiring: Social Media Consultant

One of my favorite jobs that I've had so far was recruiting for a hiring agency. I loved knowing the qualities of the positions I was hunting for, and finding the perfect people to fill those positions. That made the question of, "What important qualities do you think a Social Media Consultant should have?", extremly easy to answer. I realize that I may not be the best candidate for the position, but I think I'd be able to spot someone that is. 

The most important qualities for a social media consultant to have is focus. I know that I wouldn’t be a good social media consultant because I have an extremely hard time focusing on the task in front of me. Especially when it comes it social media because I get distracted by every little thing. At least when I have to focus on something in real life, I can turn off the electronics. When I have to do something on my computer, I have a much harder time focusing because Netflix and Facebook call my name.  

The second quality that I will mention is having the natural ability to navigate social media. If someone is going to be a social media consultant for an organization, their online presence should at least somewhat match up with the ideals that the organization is looking for. Another quality that should at least be seen throughout all of their social medias is branding, because it’s super important when it comes to cohesive social media pages. Marketing experience is also helpful when it comes to social media consultation because it goes hand and hand within today’s world of social media. Another quality that I think a social medial consultant is creativity and the knowledge to spot and fix problems within social media pages. 

If I were going to hire (or choose) a social media consultant for my fraternity, there is a long list of qualities that I would be looking for. For one, emotional maturity, because when it comes to running an organization’s social media’s pages, it’s important to stay emotionally calm and not let their personal opinions effect their decision making on behalf of the organization. Remaining professional in times of high pressure and crisis situations, is one of the most important factors of being a social media consultant. 

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Business and Internet Surveillance

I watched and read a conference talk that Maciej Ceglowski did called, The Internet With a Human Face. The reason I went back and found the typed version is because I enjoy reading and re-reading certain things when I want to fully understand them. 

Maciej first talked about when the interstate road systems and cars first became popular. They were a great resource when it came to travel. However, it has become somewhat of a hassle because now it is next to impossible to live out the American dream without owning a car. The same this is happening to the internet. 

One thing Maciej, mentioned that sent me way back was “permanent records”. Whenever I was little, and I got a bad grade or did something reprimandable, the words permanent record rang in my ears, just like they did his. The idea of everything that I have ever done being captured and written down for people in my future to read and go through, scared the living crap out of me. With this new age of technology, we have modernized and popularized our own personal permanent records. Everything that everyone does on the internet is stored and remembered. He said “Online, everything is recorded by default, and you may not know where or by whom.” This absolutely scares me. On the other hand, I realize that data gathering can be used to my advantage someday.

I also read an article called The Internet’s Original Sin By Ethan Zuckerman , which I felt tied in with Maciej’s talk quite nicely. The way Ethan discussed the internet is very similar to how Maciej discussed it, it was great in the beginning. However, as we go on as a human population, the models of business that we use on the internet are going to corrupt it, making it impossible to live in a world where we don’t have to pay for privacy. 

Advertising at its finest, pop-up ads, were one of the very first tools that advertisers used when the internet first became super popular, and data was easily gathered. Information and data was gathered from each specific social media profile and used to pick and choose when and where certain advertisements would “pop up”. 

Another, newer, business model that is discussed in the article is called Investor Storytime. Technically this isn’t really advertising, but it is the future of advertising. Most internet ads aren’t worth very much because there are just so many of them that it isn’t very hard for the average person to just ignore them. Investor Storytime, most famously used by Pinterest, creates ads that are worth the most. These ads appear at the exact right times and are sure to grab the attention of the correct potential buyers eyes. 

The reason that Ethan thinks that the internet’s original sin is advertising is because it has taught just about every internet user to expect constant advertisements everywhere they look. Internet users are just accepting that if the majority of the internet is to remain free or at a low cost, data collection and surveillance will always be at large, and they are simply accepting that. He said, “Users have been so well trained to expect surveillance that even when widespread, clandestine government surveillance was revealed by a whistleblower, there has been little organized, public demand for reform and change.” This is very similar to Maciej’s point about how google and features like the cloud have found a way to master a “centralized web”. The only problem is, everyone is always being watched all the time. 

Ethan’s solution to the problem is to “start paying for privacy, to support services we love, and to abandon those that are free”. I can kind of agree with that, however, it isn’t always possible to pay for things like the internet. I can see a world where it might be offered to the less fortunate, but we’re still trying to figure out health care, so I’m sure that the world that I live in is far from offering financial help to the technologically less fortunate. 

Maciej has a lot of solutions to the problems that the way we conduct internet business. He thinks that data that is stored and saved without our full knowledge should be limited, including the length of time the data is stored. Data is also freely shared to third parties, even in times of crisis (like during a bankruptcy), that needs to stop. Right now, if I deleted my Facebook, it’s not really fully deleted. My information and everything I liked, clicked on, and shared is now stored in some data facility and to my knowledge will never be deleted completely. The right to delete things off of the internet, or in the data storing facilities, should be granted to everyone. The legal system as a whole doesn’t have a lot of say about privacy policies and terms of service. There should be much more protection, through the law, for the average internet user. These protections need to be able to apply to everyone world-wide. If we as a whole realize that the way we are doing business on the internet currently, is toxic, and we change, then we are going to be just fine.  

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It’s moments like these that we need to take a step back and think about the important things in life. Yes, I took my phone out to take this picture, but then I set it in the cup holder of my folding chair and watched my baby sister gather candy during the 4th of July parade. One thing that got under my skin was watching the young teenage boy sitting next to me with his phone in his face recording the entire parade. I can almost guarantee that he is NEVER going to go back and watch that video and he missed it in real life. 

Take the phone/camera out, take the picture, and put it away and be in the moment. I have a horrible memory, so I survive off of pictures to help me remember times like this, but a picture or a short video is enough to help recall a fond memory. However, if you spend the entire time behind a phone or a camera, those fond memories will only be pictures and they will be basically meaningless. 

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Social Media Free for 24 Hours

I decided that the week of the Fourth of July was the absolute best time to take a break from technology. I started camping on Monday, July 2nd and for the most part, I didn’t use my phone and I didn’t open my laptop once. Afterall, holidays like that are family time. 

One thing I did find hard was falling asleep. Normally before bed, I check the two social media accounts that I use often, Facebook and Instagram. Then I play a Harry Potter game, which is an iPhone app that allows people to live in the harry potter world and make decisions, it’s my daily escape from my life. 

Overall, I generally didn’t notice the absence of my technology because I was around friends and family constantly. I imagine if I would have chosen just a random day where I had to sit and be by myself with my thoughts, the lack of technology would make my imagination run wild and I would think myself into a psychotic breakdown. 

I really think that if I put my mind to it, and I deleted all of the social media from my phone, I would be able to completely cut out all social media from my life. I truly believe that face to face interaction is the most important thing. In this day and age, people my age have a hard time having conversations with one another, including myself. That is probably the biggest argument I have with my significant other, that I cant have a serious conversation without reverting to touching my phone or making it not serious. That is something that I am working on. 

I loved this assignment because it pushed me to think about what my life would be like without technology, the idea didn’t completely put me off. Hopefully, my generation takes a step back and thinks about how much technology is taking over their everyday lives and takes the correct steps to keep human interaction a priority in their every day lives. 

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Moment

I am downloading an app called Moment onto my iPhone. Apparently, it will track my phone screen time. I realize that is only a small part of the screens I consume. I will be curious about how much time I actually spend on my phone throughout a day (and night). I don’t think I spend too much time on it, considering I really try hard to stay off of my phone when I am around my loved ones, but I am probably going to be surprised. 

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Avoiding Inter-reality

My inter-reality right now consists of online homework (which now includes way more social media than I’d like), studying for the state exam to sell insurance (for my upcoming internship), Netflix to get my mind off of both of those things and everyday life. I hate this. 

This is why the article Before The Internet by The New Yorkers Emma Rathbone, didn’t quite sit well with me. She just spewed off things that apparently were only done before the internet, but beyond some of the super vivid and specific examples, that is kind of how I live my day to day life. I do these kinds of things to avoid all of the stuff I have to accomplish the minute I open my laptop and check my email. I will agree to disagree with this writers opinions on what went down “before the internet”, all of those things may be how to avoid the internet. 

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Social Media is Ruining Society

“Our devices change not only what we do, but also who we are” Bill Moyers stated when he was introducing Sherry Turkle, one of the first clinical psychologists to study how technology and social media are affecting mankind. She recently wrote a book called Alone Together which his about how social media is affecting how humans are avoiding solitude. 

Human connection is being limited because of technology and the internet. We have a major need for constant connection. This is directly affecting face to face conversation. When the young man she talked about mentioned how he was afraid of conversation because that takes place in “real time”, meaning the ability to take control and edit and monitor everything that goes out into the world. Life online can be perfectly edited online. I completely agree with this, I have always struggled with saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. I have even got into some major fights with people that are close to me because the wrong words came out of my mouth. This happens less online because of the ability to take a moment and think about whats going out into the world. 

One thing that Sherry keeps bringing up is the fact that people aren’t being capable of being with themselves, bored. This affects younger people that are growing up in an environment that teaches them that there is never a reason to tolerate boredom. I have a major problem with being alone with my thoughts, that coupled with major depression can create a less than ideal headspace. I turn to social media and Netflix to escape the reality that is my head. 

On a daily basis social media’s influence doesn’t feel like a lot, but in reality is a large portion of my days. I know that I love the attention and the feeling of when someone “likes” my picture on Instagram. It is also a place where unnecessary stress is added to my life, like when idiots post like idiots and I can’t help myself from telling them why they're wrong. I feel way more confident to comment and give my true opinions while online, in person I hate conflict. That is another one of Sherry’s points, social media is sometimes used as a mask. Another way the internet can be negatively affecting us is it is giving our brains a reason to constantly multitask which in turn splits our attention in the real world and the cyber world, which then cuts our productivity in half as well. 

I haven’t had any experiences where I couldn’t be on my phone for an extended period of time since summer camp when I was 12. It was shortly after I gained access to a phone, so I don’t remember it being traumatic. I was just enjoying camp, the only thing I missed at the time were texts from my friends. I guess in my everyday life the only real times my face isn’t glued to a screen are when I’m sleeping, which is kind of rare, and when I’m at work. Which, I don’t really care about not being on my phone for those things, because I am busy doing something.