Social media is a huge part of many people’s lives today, and it may seem hard to picture life without it, but social media isn’t for everybody. Will Campbell, senior in mechanical engineering, explains why he doesn’t use any form of social media and what he gains by not using it.
Do you use any form of social media?
I have Gmail. I use GroupMe and I use Spotify, but I don’t really count that. I just listen to music. But I don’t have the big ones – Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat.
Have you ever tried using any of them?
I’ve actually had two different Facebooks. I had a Facebook in high school, then toward the end of high school, didn’t want it. Couldn’t really deal with it anymore. Deleted that. As I was coming to college, trying to get plugged in and stuff, it was kind of important because so many people were using Facebook to communicate, so I was like alright, I’ve got to get a new one. My first one I had like 1,600 friends or something ridiculous. So I started a new one when I came back to college that had way less friends, it had maybe like 150 or something. But I just used it to communicate and stay plugged in and then I had that for about a year. And then once I felt like I didn’t need it, I just kind of ditched it.
If you had to use one form of social media, which one would you choose?
I don’t know. I mean, I think they’re all pretty different, and I’m not really a big fan of any of them. I think that there’s a lot of pros and cons for each one. Facebook, for example, can be really good with keeping people updated with your life and things like that. [With] Twitter, you get to hear from everyone pretty frequently. There’s also a lot of cons to each one that does keep me away from all of them.
What cons do you think they have?
I kind of debate with myself a lot about what social interaction actually is and what makes it important and valuable and why we like social interaction. I think that the whole idea of social media is to capture some of those things that we think are very important, but it’s a limited medium. If you go and interact with just your friend, you know, hang out and eat lunch with them, you’re getting this really complex interaction on a couple different levels. But if you’re reading someone’s tweet, you’re not, or if you’re looking at somebody’s pictures from spring break, you’re not getting that. That pro of being able to hear from someone all of the time and feel like you’re staying in touch is good, but then you just really lose a lot of what social interaction is.
Do you ever feel like you’re at a disadvantage by not using it in regards to communication or networking?
In some senses, yeah. A lot of parties and stuff like that get planned on Facebook, or invites and events and then all the events are posted on Facebook. So, in that sense, I feel like, oh yeah, this is a disadvantage. But at the same time . . . I feel like I have a more sophisticated understanding for people in relationships from not constantly being on the news feed. At times I feel out of the loop, but [I also] feel like I’m really gaining a lot.
Would you ever consider using LinkedIn for networking in the job field?
Yeah, it’s a little less personal. I guess that’s kind of what I don’t like about Facebook—is that people that I don’t even know can discover all this information about my personal life just by being a Facebook friend. I could see LinkedIn being something where it’s just not about that. So, I could definitely see myself doing that.
What other thoughts do you have about social media?
I can’t speak as much about Twitter because I haven’t actually used it. I really dislike the way that it just consumes people. I don’t think it would be uncommon at all for someone to end up a total time spending an hour reading their Twitter feed. That’s just something I think we should be very cognizant of. I also think I’ve spent a lot of time trying to think about how I spend my time; if I’m spending an hour at social media, I could be volunteering an hour to people who don’t get to eat lunch. I’ve always got conflict with that, too. There’s kind of a moral issue there.
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