Using Social Media

In this Blog I want to share my experiences of using social media and how it does impact on my life.

Social media platforms allow users to have conversations, share information and create web content. There are many forms of social media, including blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, social networking sites, photo-sharing sites, instant messaging, video-sharing sites, podcasts, widgets, virtual worlds, and more.

Since its inception in 1996, social media has managed to infiltrate half of the 7.7 billion people in the world. Social network platforms almost tripled their total user base in the last decade, from 970 million in 2010 to the number passing 4.48 billion users in July 2021.

For myself, social media is a big part of my life.  It has helped me to connect to the world and it has helped me with my campaign work.

I started using Social Media when I was a teenager, it was MSN, this was good when I was at school to stay in contact with my school friends during the holidays and at weekends.  As I attended a school for people from all over Glasgow, most of my friends didn’t live near, so keeping in touch with them on social media helped a lot.

I remember doing an article for the Sunday Post when I was still at school, this was about being on a computer all day can be good for someone like myself which is true.  When my sister and I were at school, my sister could go to meet her friends during school holidays but I couldn’t do that, so having a computer and Social Media helped me.

As I got older, I was introduced to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

I use Facebook every day, it is great to stay in touch with my friends and get back in touch with people I knew from years ago, for example my nursery teacher got in contact with me again through Facebook which was great. With social media sometimes you need to watch who you are talking to but on the other hand Social Media is good to build friendships. I met one of my good friends at an event, then after it my friend added me on Facebook. We have been good friends for years now.  I like Facebook to see everyone’s news and pictures and I like to share mine too.

With Twitter I used it years ago, but I didn’t really like it, but last year I got back to use Twitter again. I share ideas on Twitter, and I use it to keep up with famous people!

With Instagram I don’t post a lot on it, but I like it to look at pictures.

As a campaigner and blogger social media has helped me a lot to get my word out there.  I used to use Facebook just for personal life but a few years ago I decided to make up a page on Facebook for my campaign work and it has helped me to get my voice heard about Changing Places toilets and make people aware of these toilets and Twitter has been great for this too.

So yeah Social Media is a big part of my life and it really has helped me to connect with the world in so many  ways!

Written by Jill