All Grown Up: A Millennial's Perspective on Seeing The World Raw and Uncensored 

Today’s millennials have grown up with social technology and likely do not know what it is like without constant contact with their phone. As a 21 year-old junior in college, I have witnessed the progressive change from waiting to go home to my 2002 gateway computer to minute by minute contact with my friends and the rest of the world at my fingertips. Here is a short timeline…..

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      MSN Messenger- as a 12 year old I was staying up late at night to message a boy I had never talked to in school, but spent hours giving him relationship advice on his first girlfriend.

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     Facebook- at 13 the sole purpose was to post pictures, maybe write some embarrassing and immature status. As Instagram became more popular I used Facebook to mostly in high school to be kept up to date with the latest relationship status.

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      Instagram and Snapchat when I was 15 to send or post pictures

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      I made a Twitter account when I was 18, which is more commonly used by college students.

As I grow older my reasons for using social media have changed drastically. From being interested in my high school peer's lives to now searching news events and celebrity breaking news, the focus is not necessarily more refined but still different. There is an obligation to use social media as a journalist or any news agency because of the shift from newspapers to online news. As a communications major, I feel responsible for knowing top news stories and to have social media accounts. I find that it is essential to put out information that is credible and correct. Social media is as intrusive as you make it. Whether or not you choose to make things private is completely up to the user. 

I see social media as a positive way to bring people from across the globe together and united. The first time I felt this unity on social media was the recent terror attacks in Paris. Unfortunately this was not the first time social media played a role in a major catastrophe. During the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, a student at Tech created a Facebook page “I’m OK at VT.” This page allowed students to let their families know they were safe. Twitter has replaced Facebook as a go-to place for posting a status, making it a possible for news events to be spread virtually in seconds. During the time of the Paris attack I had already been on Twitter when I refreshed the feed and saw that CNN reported a bomb went off in Paris. I saw this tweet exactly 24 seconds after it was posted with #Paris trending in a matter of minutes. Warnings of the attacks on Twitter to people around the area turned into prayers as the shooters were killed and the tragedy was over. Social media untied the nation and in a matter of minutes the thought on everyone's mind was the Twitter hashtag #prayforparis.