Exemplary student!

How do you use social media?

“We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it”

Erik Qualman

In the late 1990s, just before Y2K hit there were tons of rumors on how Y2K would wipe out communications and complete systems because the systems had not been “configured” for the next century. I was completing my postgraduate diploma then and had no clue about the ongoing discussions. My roommate had an email account on Yahoo and explained the scenario to me, while she helped me set up my email account from a computer parlor running in the neighborhood building basement. I remember taking the college laptop home to work on a project, when a relative who was more proficient in Microsoft Word, came and hit Ctrl N, and walked off, while I was in the middle of editing my document. My fingers froze, and I was devastated. I thought I had lost the entire document and panicked because I had to retrieve the document immediately or my group would roast me on a stake. After 20 minutes of frantic flapping, when the first tear dropped out of my eye, he came and closed the new document to show that the older one was still in the background and that I had not lost anything. Heaving a huge sigh of relief, I rechecked the document, (Yes. I read the entire document to see that everything was as it should be) and CTRL-S’ed it. Then, my understanding of computers and what they could do was that of a novice. I had only brought the laptop home so I could step out of the hostel for an evening with my family. I preferred using papers and writing, it was a lot faster for me.

A year later, while back in my hometown, I discovered that the younger sibling had put the desktop that had been sent back home to good use. She had ensured Mom got the dial-up connection set up and informed Dad that he could not make calls when the internet was connected. I was so excited to see that it had Microsoft Word, that I opened a new document to show off to the younger sibling, when she just smiled and promptly signed in to her Yahoo Messenger account and started talking. I was flummoxed. I had no idea what she was doing or that the computer could do something like this. This was 2000 when Google was also in its infancy and AOL, Yahoo and Hotmail reigned supreme.

A few years later, when Orkut launched, I had my own personal desktop at home. I used to use it predominantly on those random freelance projects and occasionally to chat.  The spouse would find me sitting and chatting away with friends with the kid in my arms when he got back from work. I discovered friends from school and college who I had lost contact with and loved the conversations.

Then Facebook launched! I remember setting up my account, signing in, and allowing access to my address book to see who else was on it. That’s when I found that the spouse had set up the FB account a week earlier and had not even bothered to inform me that he was on the platform. (Oh! The betrayal!!) The drama. The anger. The tears. It was all so real! Our. First. Big. Fight. I was so devastated. I did not have words to explain how much it upset me then, and I still have no words to describe that freefall kind of empty feeling I felt in my belly, today. It took him almost a few months of cajoling to get me to add him to my contacts. (not proud of it!).

So, when LinkedIn launched, I was informed, and we set it up around the same time. I remember his colleague whom I met in passing, adding me as a contact to increase the number of people he knew. (the start of influencing, perhaps!). I was conscientious about who I added on LinkedIn and what I posted on LinkedIn. I’ve refused to post the “help me get a job, after a long break” or “I quit because my priorities changed and I need a job today” kind of posts. I do apply to positions where I feel I may add value, but, today, LinkedIn feels more like Facebook with the kind of messages I see being posted.

I remember getting on Farmville on FB to play and the entire family was on it, including Mum and how we used to randomly request each other to give lives, or points or coins to jump levels. Mum scaled levels after she started to first add random people as friends on FB and then send them random requests on Farmville. She did not care who you were or where you lived. If you were on Farmville and were playing online when she was online, then she would befriend you and send you requests on Farmville. Every morning, I would find that she had made some random friends online. My biggest fear those days was about security, Mum had her ‘About me” information always updated. So, anyone glancing at her profile would know who she was, where she lived, who her kids were, and the grandkids, and OMG the details she put in! She assumed the ‘about me’ page had to be as accurate as it is in the phone book she kept. It took many years to convince her to remove the details and images. Oh, the things she did because she liked playing Farmville!

Then came WhatsApp and all the “If you don’t forward this message in the next 10 minutes, you will have 7 years of bad luck” messages. OH! Mum believed that these were real and used to send at least ten every single day. It took a lot of consistency for her to be convinced that these were just random messages and did not have to be taken seriously. But everything from recipes to song lyrics, to stories were shared on WA. And Mum was one of its biggest users. If there was a group, then she was on it. It was around this time that I learned about FOMO. Mum wanted to be part of every group and would send forwards and messages from one to the other. She was constantly on her device all the time.  As were the lakhs of users the app had cornered. Random ‘luck’ messages, fake news, spam, and ‘if-then’ messages were constantly peddled as news.

Then came Tiktok with its slapstick comedy videos the crazy challenges. The ‘ice bucket’ challenge, ‘kiki, I love you..’ running while the car rolls downhill without a driver- dance, the ‘Tide pods’ challenge, some of these started funny and ended up disrupting life. These then brought in the parents of victims of challenges posting about their loss and heartbreak. Short videos are what made Tiktok a big hit, but the crazy challenges are what tarnished their image. The privacy issues have them banned in a few countries as well.

As TikTok was pushed out of a few markets, Instagram slowly started replacing it and filled this void. Short videos, images, carousels or image galleries, gifs ‘safe’ friendly’ content, and sometimes even content that’s been posted on TikTok finds its way here. This is when I got into the video/scrolling app. I missed TikTok because the kids were younger and I did not bother with downloading it, but once TikTok got banned on my App/Play Store, I got Insta to understand what the drama was about. Just in the nick of time, it seems, because the kids are beyond proficient today in the ways of Instagram.

Social media probably started all those years ago with Facebook but was marketed as such with TikTok and Instagram. Status updates, notifications, stories, keeping people in the loop, ‘influencing’, entertainment, education, and ultimately voyeurism, are what have transformed these apps from channels of communication to social media channels. I used fb to play games. I used LinkedIn to keep in touch with colleagues. Somewhere along the way, wa, came in with all the groups and messaging to keep in touch. Instagram just popped up one day and I’ve never stopped scrolling. I’m probably a bigger horror on Instagram than my Mum was on Facebook all those years ago. I do get tips from the kids. Frequently, I can add. And I follow/unfollow people, businesses, news depending on my constantly evolving interests.

I use social media, some parts of it sparingly, like a garnish and some generously like it’s the main ingredient. Sometimes I use it to while away the time, while I wait for an appointment, and sometimes I use it to keep in touch, especially when there is something to celebrate. I am a voyeur, and I am a student and sometimes I spend time teaching. For me, social media is a way to understand the world, from a different perspective than I was raised with, but to be honest,

“In an age of tweets and tags, the most powerful statement can be silence”

Unknown