PB1A: How we define ourselves through social media (twitter)

In today's world, there are many forms of social media. There is Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat etc. But one form of social media I want to focus on is Twitter. Twitter was one of the first forms of social media that I heard about growing up and a lot of people had a twitter. When I first heard about twitter from my understanding it was a way for celebrities to connect with their fans by letting them know what they were doing by tweeting out updates. As we got older, people in my grade and my friends starting making twitters and telling others to follow theirs. Its seems to be that people nowadays care more about how many retweets they have more than they care about things that are actually important. Twitter is a form of social media where people tell about their thoughts, how they are feeling, and what is on their minds. Twitter also has a spot where you can send comments to other people. By allowing this Twitter allows you to connect with people all over the world. Twitter is a mainstream form of communication because so many people have one everywhere. In the past, I have seen people start fundraisers and through the use of twitter. Another thing that I have seen on twitter is that people have tried to bribe other people by doing things based on the amount of retweets they get. For example i have seen things like “ 200 likes and my grandma will stop smoking”. There are questions to be asked about this. Is this just people fishing for retweets? Are these people trying to get become popular or viral with the amount of retweets they will get? Some people even make the amount of tweets much much higher in the thousands. But is there people who actually mean their tweets? How will 200 retweets help your grandma recover from a smoking addiction? It wont. It is clear that Social media has become something much larger than anyone has ever expected it to. All forms of social media have the same ending effect on people. Instagram, you are defined by how many likes and compliments you get, for some reason we feel better about ourselves when someone comments “your so pretty!” or by when certain people like your picture. Twitter has that same effect. People seem to care about how many likes and retweets they get. As sad as it sounds we as people specifically teenagers strive for this acceptance. The acceptance of feeling cool, feeling like you fit in. I can say myself,that for a little while I was one of those people and I think a lot of you can relate as well. Personally I believe we care more about this in high school then any other time on our lives because teengers nowadays are held to such a high standard to be popular. I once cared about how many likes my Instagram selfie got or how many comments were posted or how many retweets my tweet got because it would make me feel more confident like people agreed with what I had to say. I guess the question were left with why do we do ths? Why is it so important that we strive for acceptance





What makes Twitter, Twitter?





So we begin to take this general idea or topic or even form of social media and we break it down into these conventions to make justify what something really is. Maybe breaking it down into these things will convince us to think that the reasons why we strive for the acceptance from social media is okay. Over 86% of twitter users to date still struggle about making sure they tweet the right content. What makes a tweet a tweet is whatever you have on your mind. Once you hit that button and start laying out your thought that's it, it is out for everyone to see. The retweet button the like button and the option to quote someone's tweet also all make a tweet a tweet.