Social media has been around for like 15 years now, it has employed web- and mobile-based technologies to support interactive dialogue and “introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities, and individuals.”
For me social media is a window to the outside world, a window to new knowledge, its education, its communication, sharing, connecting, trade, relationships, its my world… without it am so bored i can drown myself, commit all sorts of crimes to keep me sane.
My extended family who i rarely see actually never visit have nicknamed me ‘Facebook’ because that is where they find out about what is going on with me and can communicate about family updates indepth; leave the phone it no longer works with me as the cliche “work the phone”.
Any way they do not know what i have gained from always being here, plugged in like humans in Matrix fighting the machines… my war is not with the machines but mine is knowledge and connection… i crave knowledge and understanding, new information drives me and connecting with people feeds me…
Okay i am being dramatic and losing focus “am watching secret circle as i write this” let me focus…
For like seven or more years i have been on these platforms and these are the things i have learnt from them and i hold them dear to me.
These Social Media Platforms include; Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, Klout, FourSquare am active on these you can find me anytime; dormant on Youtube, Pheed, MySpace, Badoo, Tagged, CouchSurfing, Flixster, WAYN, Xanga that is what i can remember and i own a blog too.
1) Creativity
With just being on the internet i have learnt to create content that has potential to influence people. With the social media platforms and blogs i need not to be an artist to create art or even to be a writer to speak to generations, i just tweet it or update it and the world will hear of it. i can create inspiration words, share my ideas on different issues. Where wit and sincerity lies, social media has helped me focus on my creative mind and how it can help others.
2) Stay connected
Like in real relationships, if you break your connections with your friends you lose them; so does it apply to social media. Seen the dormant sites i mentioned above, yeah i lost the connection i can’t get back; though can begin again but as always beginnings are rough and hard. It takes time and re-connection is like asking Umeme to come and check out your power problems only to ask where you stay yet you always get your power bill every month (Fake just).
Anyway i have learnt to stay connected to everything am involved in or like, to keep talking about them (ideas), discuss them(topics) and show them that i care (people) thus i have built my presence.
3) Knowledge acquisition.
Am no IT student, am a Development student; yeah! That is a boomer to many people i have worked with and my family. I can do same almost things an IT student does, not much but considering yes i can. All this knowledge i have about computers, networking and some technical bits was and is still self taught. Social media platforms taught me, i learnt from my friends, from articles written about things that i were interested in, from heated discussions, from videos floating around on the internet.
4) Information never dies
Yes information never dies on social media platforms, but you better know what you are looking for if you are put to a search. If it was punched in to the internet, then its sitting somewhere on a server waiting to be discovered. They are no secrets on the internet, everything can come out in the open as its written, ‘what you do in the dark will be seen in the light’ and with internet ohh yes it will slap you in the face.
A lot of things have been optimized, changed and tweaked in the world of social media thus you better be careful what you put out there, you wouldn’t want your dirty laundry out to the world. So not all you do and have done should be out on these sites, its like a time bomb waiting to go off. This makes me miss pen and a bunch of notebooks filled with writing that never got published because it was personal *diary*
5) People are different, People are similar.
‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison’. Socialisation leads to multi cultural knowledge and understanding. I have been opened to a number of cultures, beliefs, ideologies, theories of life and its fun to know that some people are so far away from who you are and how others are so close to who you are. Social media opens you to understanding the diversity of human nature and how it relates with others.
I have learnt these so far and still going on because this thing changes like the weather and i guess a lot has changed depending on the time i have spent coming up with those lessons. Am off to learn more and i will share after.
Thank you for reading.
