How Do You Use Social Tech? Let's Chat!

 

I’ve been contemplating writing a blog post like this since I cracked open Networked: The New Social Operating System. How do I use the technology around me, particularly the social technology? In Networked, many vignettes mention people using email to maintain relationships with friends and family. Although it was written more than ten years ago, this struck me as odd because I do not use email that way. This got me thinking about how I use the technology I have access to and wondering if how I use them is weird, average, or somewhere in between. What follows are brief musings on the topic.

Email

The last time I emailed a friend just for the pleasure of it was sometime in the early aughts. I was in middle school, didn’t have a cell phone, and used email to keep in touch with friends I met at camp over the summer. However, with the advent of MySpace and FaceBook and the growing ubiquity of cell phones, I stopped using email to maintain social relationships sometime in high school.

Nowadays, almost all of the emails I receive to my personal account are from companies trying to sell me something. I rarely need to compose an email from a Gmail account; usually, these emails are about coordinating care for my first grader. Work and school emails are another story. At work, email is the default to a fault. It’s so much easier to send an email than to connect with someone face-to-face or on the phone. After a while, though, sending too many emails at work can make it seem like their communication power diminishes. After all, if I send my direct reports five emails every day (e.g., “Don’t forget to…” or “The new policy going forward is…”), after a while, I run the risk of the message I’m trying to convey turning into noise. I have been trying to combat this at work by varying the way I connect with colleagues; instead of email all the time, I try phone calls for very important topics and IMs for less important ones. However, I’ve been getting some pushback on this because email is so engrained in the culture at my office.

So, I use email a lot at work but rarely at home. Is that weird, normal, or somewhere in between? How do you use email?

Text Messages

This is my go-to communication method for my nearest and dearest. Increasingly, I am using text to communicate with businesses that I previously only communicated with via email or phone. (Think about making a veterinary appointment for my dog or signing my son up for extracurricular activities.) I have always had an aversion to telephone conversations for some reason, so the proliferation of text messaging suits me well. As an aside, my parents used to think it was hilarious that I refused to order pizza delivery over the phone; now, I can do it over the Internet – thank goodness – and avoid talking to strangers on the phone.

I don’t only use my phone’s SMS feature to send messages, either. Some of my family live overseas, making SMS impractical, so my family has a group chat on WhatsApp. My husband’s family all have iPhones and live in the US, so we have a big iMessage group chat for that side of the family.

With text messaging being so convenient and quick, it’s easier for me to keep in touch with people more regularly throughout the day. I think this is one of the reasons I don’t use email so much anymore. Why use email when you can text?

Social Networking Sites

I’m not a frequent poster on social networking sites, but I do use them to keep up with friends and family who are not as close as my nearest and dearest. Specifically, I use FaceBook, Instagram, NextDoor, and Pinterest. I used to use SnapChat, but haven’t touched it in years. I did make myself a TikTok profile once, but only because I met a dog influencer at Lowe’s and wanted to see more of his content. (All I remember is that he was a French bulldog, absolutely adorable, and his human parents were more than happy to stop and let me pet him for a while.) I don’t use Twitter and never have. I’m not sure why, other than that, it seemed like everyone was on Twitter, and I’m a bit of a rebel.

I didn’t use LinkedIn until a few months ago. My husband convinced me that it’s the new way people get jobs. I didn’t believe him, but I am slowly being converted now that I’ve finally joined and become a premium subscriber. Did you know that if you are an FSU student, you can access LinkedIn learning for FREE?! If you didn’t, you should check it out because it’s a great resource that is otherwise very expensive.

In addition to these social networking sites, I have also been an active member of two sites that pertain to my favorite hobby – reading. I used to use GoodReads and Litsy daily and post quite often. As a bibliophile, I used those sites to connect with people who share my passion for reading. I posted book reviews and recommendations often. This came with a great perk: as I got increasingly plugged into these online communities, I had more and more offers from publishers to receive a free book in exchange for an honest review. Yes, there were indie publishers, but most were imprints of one of the Big Five publishers. Even though I wasn’t anywhere near an influencer, I still had the opportunity to read and review books that became New York Times bestsellers before the books were officially released. None of this would have been possible without GoodReads or Litsy. (If you are a bibliophile like me and want to know how to get free books before publication, contact me! You do NOT need to have a big social media following.)

So, you tell me: do I use social media sites weirdly, or is my use normal in your eyes? Are there social networking sites I should be on but am not? How do you use social media?

Conclusion

What’s the verdict? Do I use social technologies like how you use them? Also, I want to hear your reflections on how you use this tech. Comment below