A technology that was designed to bring us together or at least that is what we're told by the developers. Social media just like anything on earth has its good sides and the not so pretty ones as regards how it affects Us.
As I reminisce on my first experience of social media, I can't help but call back to memory Facebook on my Nokia C2, it felt like I had hit the jackpot and was the next big thing because everybody in my school then were raving about it and I just had to know what it was about too and not feel left out when they were having conversations about the friend requests, the notifications, the likes and all those other words that sounded alien to me.
Along came 2go where you got ranked by how long you spent on the app, after so many months I finally became an Ultimate (this was achieved by leaving my phone logged into the app even when I was asleep). This was the pinnacle of ranking on the app, it was something to be proud of. I remember always asking others what stars they were on and if they said veteran or something else, I would tease them on how they were way behind me.
Fast forward to 2009 when WhatsApp was introduced, I can remember trying it on my Nokia Asha 200 and the first person I thought to send a Hi to was my crush (she didn't reply but that's not what we are talking about🥺). It is safe to say that most of the major Social media platforms have been introduced in my lifetime and I have tried them all in a way or another.
Moving on, as I said at the start of this write up, generally in life where there is good there would definitely be bad but efforts have to be made in order to ensure that the good outweighs the bad. This leads to me sharing how social media has affected my life both positively and negatively.
For the negative, I can only point to two things, firstly it made me feel inadequate and insecure about myself at some points, seeing other people do better than me especially when I looked at it through the lens of "I am better than this person"
Secondly, managing the time I used on these apps I had at my disposal was a big challenge, it stopped me from doing productive things. Spending over 6 hours liking, tweeting, sharing, chatting was a major concern for me. Eventually I found a way around this though, all my apps are set for just 1 hour daily after which it is stopped until the next day, the only app I have uninterrupted access to is Whatsapp and that's because I majorly converse with my girlfriend there.
This leads to the beautiful things that social media has brought into my life, I can't under estimate the quality of people I've met through social media, I have @jjmusa who introduced me to this amazing platform and @fashitioluwa who has been a mentor since then.
Worthy of note is the fact that I met the love of my life through social media, the first contact was via Google meet and the whole Love story progressed on WhatsApp. We stay in different states so we have to lean on Whatsapp for voice calls and video calls which helps us stay connected despite the 516.3 miles (that's 14 Hours 8 minutes by road) between us.
Through social media, I've been able to share my content with amazing people here on Hive and outside Hive. People who take out time to watch my videos, listen to me sing, read my posts, share the posts, leave beautiful and inspiring comments.
I am grateful that for me, the pros of social media in my life far outweigh the cons and I intend to keep it so.
I'd like to end this post by saying, It all depends on how you use it and the safety measures you put in place also having an understanding that not all you see on social media is reality.
All images generated using Leonardo Ai
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