In our current lives, social media is everywhere. We turn on our phones, TVS, computers… and it is there. Even snapchat, a form of sending pictures to one another, has a whole social media update where you can virtually see the whole world in the palm of your hands. You can’t go to simply tweet something silly without being able to read what’s going on around the world. You are able to talk to people you met once 6 years ago on Facebook and it seems as if you guys are best friends. We truly live in the age of social media, and it keeps growing. But, is this inherently bad? Why is there such a negative connotation around the term “social media”, and why are people being afraid to admit that they love it?

As an avid social media user, not a day goes by that I don’t share something on Facebook, tweet multiple times in a day, update my Instagram more than necessary, and constantly keep my Snapchat story updated. Some may say that I am addicted, and I’m not going to lie – I am. I am the first one to tell you that social media can get out of hand and there have been times when it has controlled my life. It takes a reality check to tell myself that I don’t have to post this, I don’t have to type that, and it’s not necessary to post this. However, that does not go to say that for that reason that social media is a virus that has invaded our culture in a negative way. We are so lucky to be the social media generation.

When we bring up social media, the immediate words we think of is, “bad, annoying, toxic”. However, take a moment and think about all we are able to accomplish through social media. In the palm of our hands, we are able to keep in contact with family members who, without social media, we may never have even known. I am able to follow people I know, and maybe people I don’t know, and see their Instagram pictures. Being able to see life through the eyes of someone else is one of the greatest qualities we can gain in order to better our understanding of life. Having the ability to keep in contact with your long distance boyfriend/girlfriend, or your family back at home when you’re away at colleges, is something that we take for granted, but is something that truly makes a difference in our relationships. And for me, the coolest part about social media is that whenever I don’t know the answer to something, or I want to do a quick reading or learn about something new, I can do it. I can simply type a few words into google and suddenly educate myself about random things.

The world is truly at our fingertips. Although there are negative aspects of social media that can arise from overconsumption and wasteful time spent, when we actually put our time and energy into using social media for what it is created for, we can see that it is not inherently bad, however it is inherently awesome. We have the ability to change our world from the palm of our hands, whether that be posting an inspirational Facebook status or tweet to brighten someone’s day, sharing our Instagram pictures to inspire others to travel and go see the world, making someone laugh through mindless Snapchat videos, and taking the time to research things we don’t know, don’t understand, and want to learn. I love social media and I am not ashamed of it. Why should you be?