Young people question uses of social media
Madison Sorteberg
Mesa Legend
Summer Ferguson is an internet personality who lives in Mesa, Arizona with 5,423 followers on a popular social media application called Instagram and 9,358 followers on Twitter. “I feel like I have exposed myself to a lot of strangers that I would have never met in the first place but at the same time I have met a lot of my closest friends,” said Ferguson. Ferguson believes that social media can impact people in a good and a bad way. “I know that at my most vulnerable times, I definitely look for attention in the wrong places it’s easy to post a picture and either feel really good or really bad about the responses,” said Ferguson.
Even though Ferguson has a lot of followers, she doesn’t like to make the amount of likes she gets on her posts define her. “It’s really dumb but the number of likes you get on something you would write in your journal that you put out on Twitter can make you feel really happy or really sad,” said Ferguson. At one point in her life, Ferguson felt like she allowed it to define her which caused her to retreat. “I had to delete my Twitter for a little bit because it affected how I acted in general. Subconsciously I was a different person online and people expected at the same version of me in person,” said Ferguson.
Ferguson believes that the original intentions social media had were once pure. “I think that people originally used social media as a creative outlet but it has become so much more of a personality. The pictures that you post or the thoughts you tweet can become to define you and it is super unfair,” said Ferguson. She thinks that social media can be an amazing place for people to be informed on current events. “I think that people are more informed than they have ever been and that is definitely beneficial,” said Ferguson. Even though it has its advantages, Ferguson thinks that people also form uneducated opinions. “People can easily form false opinions because they don’t do their research. They just go by what they see on social media,” said Ferguson.
Ferguson thinks that politicians should learn how to use social media to their advantage.
“I think that government officials could really use that to their advantage and use social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to send out information so it’s more accessible to those who don’t want to look it up,” said Ferguson. She also believes that social media platforms should be used to spread positivity. “I try to use my Twitter to spread positivity. There is so much hurt going on in the world right now that there is no need to create more,” said Ferguson. She sees that a lot of her followers are young girls with insecurities.
“The most popular thing that I see people struggle with is body image. It is so important to love the skin you are in,” said Ferguson. Khloey Ramirez is a model signed with LA Models, Agency AZ, and Ford Chicago and currently has a Twitter following of 10,000 and an Instagram following of 5,474 people. “I have been incredibly blessed by the opportunities social media has brought me. If it wasn’t for social media, my modeling agencies that I am now signed with wouldn’t have found me,” said Ramirez. Ramirez believes that there are both positive and negative sides of social media. “Like anything else, there a good things and bad things about being able to put your life out for everyone to see,” said Ramirez.
Like Ferguson, Ramirez likes to use her social media has a platform to express creativity and expose her followers to the importance of loving yourself. Whether a person uses a social media platform to express their creativity, to further ttheir career or even to herald a cause, it is clear that the internet is now the easiest way to make your mark.
