Personal Social Media Monitoring

Over the last 48 hours, in total, I have roughly spent three hours on social media. I would say that this is fairly average for a weekend. Most of that time is spent on Snapchat because that is the main way I talk to most of my friends. I have been purposely cutting down my use of social media now that the semester has started again and it tends to be a distraction when working, even writing this blog. An interesting feature in the Screen Time settings is the First Used After Pickup. Over a third of mine comes from Snapchat, which means I am usually picking up my phone to respond to a Snapchat, compared to going straight to a true social media platform.

All of the platforms that I use regularly on a daily basis are Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and occasionally YouTube. Instagram is where I go to see pictures/videos of sports, teams and celebrities. Twitter is where I go for laughs and news. I use Snapchat to talk to friends and YouTube is where I end up if I am bored and have time to watch anything and everything. Falling down the YouTube recommended hole is a very real thing.

My most frequently used social media platform is Instagram. It is the one I go to for to see what celebrities, mostly musicians that I love, are up to. They post snippets of new songs and often post videos if they are on tour. Snapchat is my second most used platform, but that is just a method of communication. I don’t use Snapchat or Instagram for the stories, as I tend to just skip through most of them, as I only watch a select few.

I normally just check social media out of boredom as it is something to do. Social media at my age I feel does more harm than good. People are overly worried about what others are doing and can’t enjoy life without worrying about what others may think. In high school, there was a six month span my senior year that I deleted Instagram and Twitter. At the time, that was the vast majority of my social media platform use. It was an extremely peaceful time in my life. I was able to break the habit of checking social media whenever I was bored or checked out of habit, such as closing an app and reopening it immediately after. I would love to go back to that but social media has become such a major news outlet for me that I would be less informed without it. It is where I go for all of my sports news and new in general, such a politics and other world news.

Most of my social media use, especially on Instagram, is all sport related. From the numerous official Michigan pages to the fan accounts, I often see the same post three or four times. On Instagram, I follow 462 accounts, but I had to scroll through over 200 posts on my homepage before I saw a post from a “normal” account (friends, people I know, etc.). I actually didn’t even make it to one, I just stopped at 200. Those posts were mostly from various sports accounts (NHL, NFL, B/R, ESPN, you name it), news accounts as well as memes. Another large portion of my feed on both Instagram and Twitter is shoes as that is a hobby and interest of mine, so I like to keep up with the newest shoes and what athletes, particularly NBA players are repping on and off the court.

I have not made any purchases influenced or directly through social media. I am not sure that I have ever made a purchase off of social media or have seen an ad and let that consciously influence a purchase I have made. I have seen advertisements for things I have already bought, but I am not sure if I have bought something because of a social media ad.

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