Writing Prompt #3

Ally Weiner

UWRT 1104-045

UNC Charlotte 801129008

Writing Prompt #3

Social media has many benefits, especially when it comes to contacting friends or family.

This is even more relevant now that I’ve moved over 1,000 miles away from home to go to

college. Social media that I’m most thankful for is texting, snapchat, and facetime. These are

primarily used when I want to call my mom, or text my friends back home and tell them how I’m

doing. It’s definitely very convenient that I have this technology directly at my fingertips.

When it comes to my genealogy project, the only way I could find out information was

through social media. I suppose I could’ve written letters and that would’ve been just the same,

but that would’ve taken so much more time. By the time I would get feedback, and my mother

was able to send me artifacts from my family, it might’ve been past the deadline. Being able to

contact my family instantly has helped me gain information most efficiently.

Although those are very good benefits of social media, social media isn’t perfect. There

are dilemmas like maybe your power is out. Or, maybe you lose your phone. There’s also the

emotional stress. This mostly comes from apps and platforms where you can see what others are

doing and they can see what you’re doing. Major platforms of this sort include Instagram,

snapchat, Facebook, and even twitter. Yes, these can help you keep up with your friends even

when you’re busy and maybe can’t hang out with them. However, this also can cause severe

emotional problems and depression. You can see when people are ignoring you, hanging out

with people that aren’t you, not liking your pictures, unfollowing you. This can cause people,

even me, to stress out. I often find myself caught up with how many likes a picture gets when

that’s really not the intent.

The older generations in my family did not have these concepts when they were growing

up. My mother’s best friend lived down the street from her so they would hangout after school

and not have to worry about texting or any of that. I know that I didn’t have nearly as many
Writing Prompt #3

sleepovers before I got a cell phone, but I always had a home phone. My mother had a land line

growing up that her family shared. They also used to have these phones for their car. They were

called “Bag phones”. These were not technologies that I ever had, because I got a cell phone far

before I ever had a car. As technology keeps changing and evolving, I’m curious as to what my

children are going to think at the fact, I didn’t have a cell phone until I was 10, or we used to

have iPods, or anything else that may be obsolete by then. It’s always interesting to think about

the evolution of technology and how rapidly it continues to grow.