Four years later I was a sophomore in college when I sent my
first tweet. My freshmen roommate tweeted occasionally during the school year
but I never really understood what it was. I tried it once and deleted my
account in a matter of days because I was frustrated with how it worked. I
tried it again a few weeks later and the same result ensued. Finally on
September 20th, 2011 I decided to make a 3rd account and
said I would keep it for at least 6 months. I sent out my first tweet and
started following athletes and journalists from around the area. I didn’t know
it then, but I was hooked.
I started middle school in 2004 and since then, social media
has been a part of my life. I have had an AOL email address since 1996 (5 years
old) after my Dad decided to make one for all of us. That account (jhines91@aol.com) is still my primary
account today. AOL accounts were popular because you could use AIM or AOL
Instant Messenger for those who haven’t heard of it. AIM was the craze in
2004-2006 during my middle school years. Everyone had their own name and you would
rush home after school to jump onto AIM. Who was online? Who had their away
message up? Away message? Yes, back then you would actually create a message
about where you were so that people wouldn’t get worried about you. Away
messages contained quotes, jokes, and break up messages for one of my friends
who I won’t name here.
Besides MySpace, AIM, Facebook, and Twitter, dozens of other
social media sites have reached millions of people on the World Wide Web. Mix
that with text messages and you now can talk to thousands of people, without
ever moving your mouth.
So what have I realized over the years when it comes to
social media? Is it good? Is it corrupting society? Is it the best thing since
sliced bread? The answer to those questions comes from how you use these social
devices on a daily basis. Here are some recent experiences I have had in the
past few months. I will keep names out, just for fun.
A couple weeks ago I am at Lifetime Fitness working out and
see a couple girls I know. I go up and say hi. One I used to work with and the
other one I have talked to maybe once or twice in person but we occasionally
talk on Twitter. After a few minutes of talking to them I get asked about
teaching and how it is going. I find it pleasant that a couple people I rarely
talk to not only know where I am teaching, but want to know how it is going.
They only reason they know I am even a teacher is because they saw it on social
media. The conversation lasts about ten minutes before I head to the showers
and they head to work out. Haven’t talked to either of them since.
A couple days later I am back on the bike and I am about to
get caught up on Twitter. I haven’t been on all day, and I am interested in
what is going on in the world. I use Twitter as my newspaper and rightfully so.
By the time I would have picked up the newspaper on a Friday afternoon, the
paper is already old, and most of the news is irrelevant. Twitter gives me the
up to the second coverage of what is going on locally, nationally and globally.
24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year my Twitter feed is helping me
stay current with the world. I reach into my pocket and try to unlock my phone.
Dead. Damn it, I mutter to myself as I use my phone for both entertainment and
music during my workout. I plug my phone into the bike, which at least has an
NBA game on. That will do I guess. I look out beyond the glass to see a dad and
daughter playing volleyball. They go back and forth laughing and giggling with
each other. If I had to guess I would say she was back for the weekend from
college. Every time the ball would come towards me on the bike she would run
and retrieve it, look up and smile. Beautiful smile she had. As my workout
ended I headed to fill my water bottle and they were right behind me. I made it
known that they kept my attention off the time on the bike just by being there.
Both laughed and were happy they had an audience. I told them to have a good
night and went on my way. Chances are I will never see them again but wouldn’t
have ever even noticed them if my phone wouldn’t have died.
A couple years ago I am on Twitter on a Saturday
night/Sunday morning. It is 3:00 AM and I am about to go to sleep. I check my
feed one last time and see one of my friends tweeting that she is in Saint
Cloud. Her and a few friends were there for a party and ended up losing the
person they were supposed to stay with. I called her and told her I was about
ten minutes away from Saint Cloud but could give them my address since they had
a sober driver. 15 minutes later they were at my house. I offered them blankets
and the couple couches we had and headed back to bed. By morning they were gone
but I received texts the next day thanking me for at least giving them a place
to stay so they weren’t stuck in Saint Cloud at a random house for the night. All
because I decided to check Twitter before bed on a random Saturday night.
Another Saturday morning I am on Twitter and start talking
to some people about the horse races. What is so good about them anyways? Soon
I was following about 35 new people from around North America that like to talk
about horse racing. Some talk only about the races, while some are like me and
mix it into their tweets throughout the week. A couple individuals from the
horse racing community have stuck out. One works at Star Tribune and writes
about horse races for the paper. I ran into him at Canterbury Park last year
and we took a picture together. I ended up hitting a pick 4 later that day to
cap off a great day. I see him a few more times over the summer, including my
birthday where he decided to buy me a pick 3 ticket for my birthday to split if
it hit. It hits, he walks down to my friends and I and we exchange a few words
before he wishes me Happy Birthday one more time before he departs. An amazing
guy that I met all because of a silly social media site. The other guy I have
yet to meet. His lives in Canada and he is currently my favorite Twitter
follower. He talks about hockey, the NFL, his hatred for Bayern, and his love
for the Montreal Canadians as well as his family. From twitter we have
exchanged phone numbers and have had multiple conversations via FaceTime about
the horses and whatever else. One person I would love to meet when our paths
cross someday. He is welcoming his second child soon and I couldn’t be happier
for him.
The next guy is also someone I had never met until this past
summer. He is another teacher and he loves Golf, UNC Basketball, Chelsea Blue,
and Shamrock Shakes. He is also a huge fan of Twitter. I met him from my
college roommates and a group of us finally got to play a round of golf
together last summer. We had talked frequently over the time I first started
following him and finally being able to meet someone I had talked to on Twitter
so much was great.
Two more people left on the list…. And they couldn’t be more
opposite.
The first is someone who used to tweet an insane amount of
times when I first started following her. Her tweets were always so relevant and
it ended up striking up a conversation one day. We went to school close (I went
to SJU and she went to Saint Cloud State) and decided to have coffee one time
and actually meet. We went to school together and graduated 3 years apart so we
knew each other but didn’t really know each other. We met at a caribou and
spent a couple hours talking and doing homework. Over the next couple years we
have met up for coffee a few times and have done homework at Caribou and at
SCSU library with other friends as well. We don’t talk very often but we have
some of the best conversations that friends can have. I trust her with anything
and everything and she does the same with me. The best part about our
friendship is that we are really nothing alike. Our personalities are different
but we always have great conversations while continuing to learn more about
each other at every meeting. I can’t wait to see her over Christmas break and
catch up. Another great twitter follow that turned into a friendship.
The last person that I “met” on social media has been with
me to Wisconsin twice and we have hung out MAYBE ten times in our lives. We
share a love for Minnesota Twins baseball and while we have a lot of similar
opinions, we also argue about sports a lot. The best part about this individual
is that our debates are respectable, and always usually end up agreeing on a
specific point. Recently he got married to a beautiful bride and is becoming a
father this summer. I am really glad I got to know him over Twitter as well.
For people in high school and college, please put your phone
down during class. Junior year I got my phone taken away so many times that I
was beginning to have in school suspension. It was bad. Finally I made the commitment
to just put it away and not even have it in my pocket. The amount of information
I was missing in a 50-minute class was astonishing. When I got to college I
went back to old habits. New girlfriend who I wanted to talk to 24/7 and I
didn’t care what my freshmen writing professor was saying. My GPA was dropping
and I decided again to take myself away from my computer and phone during
class. Within weeks my test scores got better and my GPA went up significantly.
Senior year I took 22 credits and my phone stayed in my pocket the majority of
the time. It was the best semester of my SJU career and although I love social
media more than most, there are definitely times where your focus needs to be
elsewhere.
I wake up and check my phone before I get up and jump in the
shower. I have an order in which I do it even. Currently, it is Instagram,
Snapchat, Facebook, and finally Twitter (sad I know.) Facebook needs me a
notification that there are friends with birthdays today. One of them in
another teacher at the middle school I work at. Good to know. I pass him in the
halls and am able to wish him a happy birthday. Had I not had Facebook, I would
have never known.
So many things are missed because we are too busy sitting on
our phones. We miss out on real conversation between two humans because we are
too busy trying to talk to someone who is on the other side of the city, the
state, the nation, or the World. I recently had a good friend tell me that he
believed that while being on my phone provided a lot of good information for us
to talk about, that he felt like half the time I wasn’t there. It never hit me
until he was honest about it with me and now I try to stay off of it as much as
possible when I am in the middle of a conversation with people. That being
said, you have seen examples of how good social media can be. On how you can
really get to know someone you never would have known, had it not been for
social media. With most things, anything can be good in moderation and I
believe that applies here. Social media is an extremely powerful tool and if
used correctly can be extremely beneficial. As someone who likes to meet new
people, I couldn’t be happier that I joined and update my profiles on a regular
basis.
This post finishes perfectly. I am sitting at a Starbucks
with my face in my computer when I look up and take a sip of my Christmas blend
coffee. I love the smell of coffee shops, which is the main reason that I
always end up doing work there. Across the store is a friend I haven’t seen
since high school. I yell her name and she looks up from her iPhone. She tells
me she has been sitting there for an hour, about the same amount of time I have
been. Our social world of tweeting and texting had us glued to a device in
front of us, that we didn’t realize what was truly in front of us, in the real
world. We move next to each other and spend the next hour or so talking and
catching up. When she leaves I come back and type this last paragraph laughing
as I realize how wonderful the world is sometimes. 50 years ago people would
laugh at they way we communicate with each other and in another 50 years,
things will be so much different that they will probable laugh as well. For
now, take a look at life for what it really is. Short. Meet as many people as you
can. Go get coffee. Go to dinner. Watch a sporting event together. The
experiences you have with new friends that you met either online or in person
will only make you a better person, that I can promise you.
