Growing up through Social Media

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Growing up through Social Media

May 08, 2020

I still vividly remember my first moments on social media. It began with Facebook, and I was dying to make an account. However, my parents refused to let me until I was 13 because they did not want me lying about my age (accounts could only be made by people ages 13 and up). On my 13th birthday, before school started, I excitedly started my weird journey of cringey teenager posts and way more pictures than anyone would ever want to see. I remember Instagram being a more hesitant start, as people were still unsure of what the platform was and if it was worth using. I was in history class in 8th grade when I decided to make an account, and my Instagram presence began with over-filtered photos and adding as many hashtags as I could think of to the caption.

I believe that my timing in beginning to use social media (Instagram in particular) was especially interesting because it was brand new. Kids my age were simply having fun and going into the experience without any preconceived notions of what their content should look like. The best way for me to describe the way social media has shifted so dramatically and impacted the current generation of teenagers is to compare 8th grade me to my 8th grade sister. Middle school had always been a time of terrible social skills and awkward transitions. Everyone looked like they were either a giant child or an out-of-place middle-aged adult, and Instagram reflected that. However, in looking at my sister’s Instagram, you will see something totally different. Perfectly curated posts are alongside captions that took an hour and consultations from friends to create. Awkward transitional phases are replaced with Brandy Melville outfits you would see on any young Instagram influencer. Social media has forced this new tech-savvy generation to grow up more quickly and adapt to what they see working on the platforms.

As for my own shifting social media habits, as Instagram grew in popularity and established itself, I found myself going through phases of trying too hard and believing the warped sense of reality that influencers create on the platform. It is easy to fall into comparison and insecurity when Instagram has become a place of only showing the best moments and never the worst ones. People’s lives can appear perfect when they are choosing how they portray themselves. My time in high school was consumed with caring too much about image on social media, but since then I have tried to keep reality in check and remember that perfection is never as it seems. My use of social media is becoming more and more passive, as I am taking inspiration from posts and keeping up-to-date with friends, but finding myself posting less and less. Not to mention the fact that there are new social media platforms like TikTok popping up that I have no interest in personally joining and frankly do not even understand. It will be interesting, as I begin a career in marketing, to shift from being the youth many companies are targeting to being the person attempting to understand how to target the new youth.

Natalie Rulon, a student in Jon Pfeiffer’s media law class at Pepperdine University, wrote the above essay in response to the following question: How old were you when you first started using social media? How have your social media habits changed over the years? The class covers copyright and social media. Natalie is an Integrated Marketing Communications and Multimedia Design major.

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