The Barrier of Social Media in Schools

Social media and teenagers is often a sour topic, and for a somewhat reasonable reason. Because of it, it, its a no-brainer that most schools are also against it. Although, often times students tend to ignore their schools and use social media in it's abundance anyways, despite the many warnings against doing so. Though, as a student myself who, in my own opinion, isn't overly involved with social media, I feel that this is a gap that schools need to start to bridge if they would like to make progress with students and their levels of education.

Of course, there are already schools who have started to use social media to bridge gaps and form communities. These are also the schools who have seen the benefits of social media, using it as a tool to form communities and seeing it as a tool that empowers it's students. Although, this hasn't done much to change the minds of a lot of teachers, many still against the system and not utilizing it. There are also still many reasons to as it is a big distraction for students in class, and many teachers opting to take a more old fashioned approach with traditional pen and paper teaching.

Social media creates and kindles friendships beyond school walls, and creates more defined friendships between students. Although, with the top social media platform for most teenagers being Snapchat and Instagram, it often seems like a wall of privacy that teachers can't breach, as most sensible students would simply block any teacher who tried to add them. Though, I feel this can be changed through a slight change of approach.

Social media has become so intertwined with our daily lives, it boggles me as to why it's not presented as such and is treated as a waste of time when realistically it's what everyone does. This is where my core idea comes from; this idea of presentation. I feel that if schools presented social media as an accepted part of the students lives, then there wouldn't be such push back. I feel it would make it a more open loop than it is already, allowing teachers to get a glimpse of the world a lot of kids take refuge to. It could open these ideas of cyber bulling and classmate drama to the school, allowing them to take action.

Now, you may think 'well it can't be that simple,' but the fact of the matter is that it is. What a lot of people really need to open up and show others is just this idea of normalcy, and almost an acceptance of what normal is. Yes, students know that all of their teachers use social media as well, but the amount of push back makes it very hard for those kids to understand this normalcy. If teachers allowed kids to open up, then maybe we could all see the push back we get.

Citations
Students on Social Media. ABA, 11 July 2018, abaforlawstudents.com/2018/07/11/
     law-students-social-media-do-they-mix/. Accessed 16 Dec. 2019.
Wade, Lori. "How Social Media is Reshaping Today's Education System."
     Georgetown University Center for Social Impact Communication, Georgetown
     University, csic.georgetown.edu/magazine/
     social-media-reshaping-todays-education-system/. Accessed 16 Dec. 2019.

The Use of Social Media for Promotion, From Home to the World

Social media has become one of the greatest connectors of our current time. So, using that as a reference, it would make a lot of sense that its the best place to promote or advertise things. There are many advertisements everywhere on the web and social media, and their advertising everything; shoes, computers, spas, like I said, everything. It would make sense for a small business to use this advertisement to grow and expand, and that's exactly what Moonlight Meadery did.

https://www.nhbr.com/social-media-the-great-leveler/

The Moonlight Meadery started out as a small brick and mortar winery in New Hampshire. Being here, of course when I say small, I mean small. However, Using some of the ideas that I had previously mentioned, they went from a local shop to the "largest production and only certified-organic New Hampshire meadery," and they had done this using the power of social media presence and advertisement.

As said in the article, "One of the wonderful benefits of the digital age is that you don't need a fancy brick-and-mortar storefront anymore to attract customers. What you do need, however, is an effective marketing strategy that will bring people to your website to then buy your product." This effective marketing strategy came straight through on Facebook, which in itself is a genius tactic; The general demographic of active Facebook users is above ~30 years old, and Facebook uses many different algorithms to find local groups for you. This means that people from New Hampshire would see their advertisements, most likely being in the correct demographic to buy alcohol, and be able to easily find their website to order it.

https://www.wthr.com/article/peloton-faces-social-media-backlash-new-holiday-ad

Now if you know about the company Peleton, great, but I'm gonna explain what they do anyways for people who don't know. Peleton is an exercise company, and more specifically an in-home exercise machine company. Recently, they put out a Christmas ad for their new in home exercise bike, and the advertisement came with quite a lot of... criticism.

You see, the ad follows the story of this woman who gets a new Peleton bike from her husband for Christmas. Of course she is excited, and begins to use it while making a vlog of her using over the days. This vlog concludes with her saying 'Thank you' to the camera, only to reveal the husband and wife on the couch watching the video together. Now, from this description, you may think 'Oh, how bad could that be?' Well, let me throw a bit of the criticisms into play here.

First off, the woman who gets the brand new Peleton bike looks to be very fit and slim with an almost ideal body. Like, why would she need the exercise bike if shes already there? Also, this was a gift from her husband. If that's not the biggest slap in the face to a woman in a marriage, or even in any relationship, than I don't know what else is. There's a great, if not a bit vulgar comedic parody on twitter by the user @evaandheriud, and I'll put a link at the bottom of this for those who are interested.

So this in general is a good example of two things; 1) the comparison of a local advertisement and a global corporate advertisement, and 2) the comparison of good promotion, and... well, less savory promotion. Of course, there are links to the articles in the blog, so if you would like to read more about these, go right ahead. Next time you see an ad though, think about how important it is that you have seen it.

The Peleton bike parody by @evaandheriud

Advertisement. https://cambly.com, cambly.com, content.cambly.com/2017/02/11/
     ielts-topic-advertisement/. Accessed 9 Dec. 2019.
NH Business Review. 21 Nov. 2019, www.nhbr.com/social-media-the-great-leveler/.
     Accessed 9 Dec. 2019.
Tegna. "Peloton faces social media backlash for new holiday ad." WTHR, 3 Dec.
     2019, www.wthr.com/article/
     peloton-faces-social-media-backlash-new-holiday-ad. Accessed 9 Dec. 2019.
"when my husband gets me a Peleton for Christmas ........" Twitter, uploaded by
     Eva Victor, 2 Dec. 2019, twitter.com/evaandheriud/status/
     1201610153549848580?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E12016101
     53549848580&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wthr.com%2Farticle%2Fpeloton-faces-social-m
     edia-backlash-new-holiday-ad. Accessed 9 Dec. 2019.

Why You Shouldn't See Social Media as a Bad Thing

It seems that as time goes on, social media gets more and more of a bad wrap for itself. More and more people are seeing social media as a virus or a threat and its becoming a problem. As a relatively moderate user of social media, I feel like that the fears come from the irrational things that are reported by the news and what not, and to be frank that's what the news does; report irregularities.

Often times people see a lot of things about harassment or cyber bullying, however when they think about it little do they realize that this isn't too different than the real world. People get bullied and harassed, and yet in the real world there is no mute or ignore or block button. In the real world, there are no admins that we can report inappropriate behaviors to.

So now might be the part where you say 'well if it's so great, than what about it makes it great?' Well, let me start it off with this; without social media, would you know what other places in the world were like? Would you know about the riots in Hong Kong? Or how about where you wanted to plan your next vacation to? Social media is one of the biggest sources of information that we have now, and even though you may not think that, you absorb so much information from social media all the time. Even if it's just how your friends are doing, that's still something that you wouldn't have known through a Google search.

Another amazing thing is it makes everyone connected in the world. With a world that was so sparse with everyone really only knowing people they've met in person, that sort of connectivity was exactly what we needed. I can talk to people from China, Australia, California, Germany, all from the comfort of my New Hampshire home.

Now, this is man with an opinion that directly contrasts my point. In this Ted Talk, Cal Newport goes on to say that he believes you should quit social media for an array of reasons, however I feel like he contradicts his point almost immediately in the beginning as he says that he has never had a social media account. Now the reason why this is a problem for his point and topic is the fact that he makes the argument of all of these different topics of sort of addicting issues with social media, and yet knows nothing of the great things about it.

Social media is, from a business stand point, a source of mass media entertainment. It's made to be engaging, just like a movie or TV shows. The fact that it's almost addicting shows that social media does a really good job of being a source of entertainment. It's the reason why I don't like the argument of that it's bad because it's addicting. In fact, for us as a society it's quite the opposite: If it's that addicting of a social media, than realistically it's a good thing for us as it satiates our constant need for entertainment, especially because it's very easily accessible.

So as a take away, I want you to think about how you use social media; maybe to talk to friends, maybe to learn new things, or maybe to find other places of the world you didn't know about. Either way, you are purely a consumer of it's entertainment, and you shouldn't be angry about it. It's all addicting as it activates your brain with the things you want to see, and what's so bad about that?

Citations
Social Media Icons. Word Stream, www.wordstream.com/social-media-marketing.
     Accessed 25 Nov. 2019.
Newport, Cal. "Why You Should Quit Social Media." TED, TED Conferences, June
     2016, www.ted.com/talks/cal_newport_why_you_should_quit_social_media.
     Accessed 25 Nov. 2019.

Is Virtual Reality a Social Media Platform?

Virtual Reality has always been a bit of a concerning subject, especially for those who don't understand it. People think it could replace reality itself for the youth, and in an irrational opinion, for the entire world. Now, even though it's a bit pricey for some, it's becoming a large deal very quickly, with people making VR experiences of already existing games, and some for new games, and not to mention the fact that some games now just have VR mode as a standard feature.

So what does this exactly mean? Is it the signs that this is where games will go, the direction they will follow? Well, I don't believe that just yet, but that's not to say that the system of VR will fail. There's one game that has made a huge impact on the idea of Virtual Reality itself. I'm talking about a game called VRChat. In VRChat, you do exactly as it's not so creative title says; you go in VR, and you chat. Well, I mean, of course there's more to it than that, but that's what the base premise of the game was until people began to get creative.

People began to make different worlds to explore with your friends, all different types of experiences and games, such as a cowboy shootout kind of game, or a map where you can draw on a 3d plane by moving markers through the air, maps that are extremely detailed to be a beautiful landscape to roam around in, or even horror maps where you go through labyrinths of scares and spooks with your friends.

Not only that, but you can customize your character if you know how to 3d model and animate (Or you can choose one of the models that have already been made and are public). Because of this, you can be virtually anything. You can have people walking around as the giant robots, or small little people, almost every single one being unique. You have characters from games, anime, television, memes, or even real people at times. I've seen everything to characters from games like League of Legends to 3d scans people got of themselves, or for some of the more resourceful, people who are several 2d images of themselves that cycle as they move around.

So how exactly is this a social media? Well, I can say as someone who uses VRChat quite a bit, I'd say that without a doubt it is a social media in my eyes. The fact of the matter is that even though I'm not talking face to face with someone, it sure feels a lot more connected than something like Facebook or Twitter. The fact that people can look or do virtually anything they want is fantastic and awesome as you can see the true colors of the people in the game. I've connected far beyond my reaches of New Hampshire, meeting people from the UK, Colorado, Germany, Japan, Australia, and many more places far and wide. I've talked with people who are funny and creative, finally finding an outlet to express their artistic talents, and also people who are just there to talk.

You may say that people like me need to go out and meet more people, but now, talking face to face with people has never been easier, and trust me, with this I've gone far and wide.

Citations
Guy In VR Headset. Mar. 2016. npr, 8 Apr. 2016, www.npr.org/sections/      alltechconsidered/2016/04/08/473436382/      wearing-vr-headsets-in-public-is-now-a-very-awkward-thing. Accessed 13 Nov.      2019.