Something that appeared on my Instagram Feed

I am going to focus on the Social Networking Sites of Instagram and Facebook. The pros of Instagram are that it lets users see what is going on in other people’s lives such as friends, family, and influencers through reels (short videos) and posts. You can follow a wide range of influencers and profiles and your feed will reflect who you follow and what you like including profiles that are recommended to users through the algorithm on Instagram. Users are also able to turn off notifications on their phones. It is also easier to use. Some negative aspects of Instagram would be getting stuck in a loop watching reels and losing track of time. And that it’s targeted towards a younger audience of Gen Z and Millennials. With Facebook, you can see what is happening in other people’s lives, friends, family, influencers too. This happens through posts and reels; however, the reels are less noticeable than what people post. Some negative aspects of Facebook are that mainly the older generations use it such as Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and some of Gen Z. It is irritating in that once a user connects their email to Facebook, filling up their inbox with emails when they turn off their notifications and when they are inactive receiving at times peoples posts and message notifications. This means that people have to block Facebook or unsubscribe. Some posts on Facebook repeat themselves.

The SNS’s are similar. Instagram’s entertainment and interpersonal messaging are more constant. Posts come out daily, people’s stories are always updating, reels change, and users can constantly refresh. Interpersonal messaging is easy, although there’s a word limit, so that means many paragraphs of words if a user is telling a story. For Facebook there are posts, and stories, and interpersonal messaging. Posts are less constant, refreshing the feed for a new post stops at one point. With both SNS’s users can share informative posts, however, Instagram makes it more accessible for information and learning through swiping on a post with many slides, kind of like PowerPoint. Facebook doesn’t have the swiping ability, making it less comfortable to access information.

Over three days I consumed more than I shared. I only shared one post/video/or story with one of my parents, my sister, and a friend on Instagram. I spent about five minutes on Facebook consuming. I don’t alter photos and I post incredibly rarely on Instagram.

My behaviors and expectations changed towards SNS’s due to increased usage. For me, I used SNS’s to stay connected to my friends and extended family. I also used SNS’s as an educational tool and learned a lot of information about the presidential election, climate change, cooking, Covid-19, ADHD, and many more topics. I learned more about myself through the educational information that I found and reflected on the information.

This high usage is typical according to my sources it is also incredibly useful to stay connected, “Social media, or forms of electronic communication which facilitate dissemination and sharing of information, ideas, pictures, and videos, can be a particularly apt tool for accomplishing this [Sharing of reliable information related to Covid-19].”- (O’Brien, Irish Medical Journal) Because social media is such a quick source to obtain the information it makes social media in itself an effective way to post accurate information. Every person who uses social media is interconnected to other people instantly and is a part of an online community. People would feel lonelier during Covid, and people needed that source of community that was taken away from them.

Other people would likely share the same amount of creation and consumption. The consumption of words, images, videos, etc., would vary depending on whom other people follow. I don’t create as much as my friends or family members and would be considered one of those who rarely post.

References:

Cover, Rob. Digital Identities: Creating and Communicating the Online Self. Google Books, 2015. Google Books Preview, accessed Oct. 2021, https://books.google.ca/books?id=iNqcBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

O’Brien, Michael. “Social Media Spread During Covid-19: The Pros and Cons of Likes and Shares.” Irish Medical Journal, vol. 113, no. 4, (publish date not mentioned), p. 52, accessed Oct. 2021, https://imj.ie/social-media-spread-during-covid-19-the-pros-and-cons-of-likes-and-shares/