Is Social Media Good, Bad, or Somewhere In-between?

On my first day as a Washington County Chamber of Commerce intern, my supervisor added the business’s Facebook page to my account. I had no idea what I was doing.

While I had plenty of experience as a journalist and blogger prior to taking on this position, I lacked in experience in using social media professionally. But, I figured it out. Each time I wrote an article or published a blog to the Chamber’s website, I then shared the post with the members of the Chamber Facebook page. I took photos and put together albums within Facebook. I found a way to include my personality into my work through this outlet.

In all honesty, I didn’t expect my stories to get much attention from the public given that the county is rather small. Had it not been for the Facebook community, I think this would’ve been true. Since I could post and share though, my stories quickly spread among the Chamber followers, and then even among outsiders.

These professional social media experiences positively impacted my time with the Washington County Chamber. Because I could witness my work being shared and talked about throughout my community, I felt as though I was making a difference. Though I was already dedicated to my position and to telling true, important stories, this encouraged me even more to find and tell even more stories. The unique role that social media played in this experience is that it made me feel connected to my readers. After sharing my stories, I would anxiously anticipate responses, excited to see who shared the post or who commented about the businesses I wrote about. As a professional, the use of social media in this position was important to getting name and work “out there,” but also important to me personally because it made me feel closer to my community.

As an aspiring journalist, social media sharing is important to me because it builds a name for myself and publicizes my work in fast, vast ways that couldn’t be done otherwise. I’m thankful that my social media experience as a professional was a positive one, because this increased my understanding of the importance of social media and has encouraged me to continue to use it for these purposes.

Facebook was at the heart of my success as an intern at the Washington Counter Chamber of Commerce, but social media hasn’t always been so kind to me.

When I was a young high schooler, my best friend and I were going through a falling-out. As far as I knew though, we were still friends, just not as close. That is, until social media exposed the truth to me. It all came crashing down in ways that I wish it never would have. I know it would’ve happened much differently, much more civilly and maturely, if social media hadn’t existed.

I won’t go into the full story, so this is the short version. For my 16th birthday, my parents rented a limo to host my friends and me for the night. She’d taken a picture of us in the limo and posted a simple ‘happy birthday’ post. Life moved on. Months later, one of my other friends told me I should go back at look at the post. She’d changed the caption to read ‘limo courtesy of a two-faced ex-best friend.’ Ouch.

From there, it became a childish social media battle with petty posts and unnecessary comments. If I’d never seen that post, she and I would’ve drifted apart and life would’ve gone on. I don’t think either of us would’ve confronted each other without having social media as an outlet for our emotions. Instead, we had a bitter end that still keeps us separated all these years later. Today, I work hard to prevent social media from becoming a negative influence on my life and my relationships, unlike I did at 16.

Social media can be exciting, fun, and even beneficial. But it can also be toxic and demeaning.

Use it wisely.