Amber Lawson (youth voice):: What does social media mean to me?

Image by pomegranates via Flickr

Social media. What does it mean to me? Well, while the world scrambles over Facebook and new social websites are popping out of our eyeballs every minute, I don’t think anyone notices the impact that social media is having on our world.

In some aspects, social media is great. I recently got in contact with two of my dearest friends back in primary school. They live in England, I live in Australia. Without this large online community, I would have never spoken to them again, yet here I am uploading photos and talking about seeing them on my next trip to the UK.

There are situations which I’m not sure are good or bad. For example, the earthquake (ha!) that we had a couple of months back: did anyone check the news to see if it really was an earthquake? Did anyone turn on the radio? Ask their neighbours? Call up the local science lab? Nope, we all checked Facebook. As proved by my news feed on the night (40+ statuses guys).

With the changing scope of our world, we’re playing video games against Americans, swapping diet tips with our neighbours in Europe and ordering scarves and DVDs and iPhones from the guys up in Asia. But we’ve also started noticing the widening of hips, that none of us speak to our neighbours anymore (what’s a street party?) and Generation Y will agree with me on this one, but when my mother starts talking about all the advantages I have nowadays…I really don’t see it.

Because with this social media bug we’ve all seemed to catch, sites like formspring have come into the playground. No longer do your friendly school bullies have to confront you face to face, they don’t even have to send you a text message from their phone anymore! They can just pop onto any computer and click on your account and tell you that you’re rank, or uncool, or ugly, or whatever word they feel like using on that particular day. Sometimes, human nature really disgusts me.

So, what does social media mean to me? Well, it depends on the day. Or my mood. Or whether I’m having to comfort my best friend from an anonymous offender, or whether I’m talking to my best friends from back in the good old days. Social media may seem like a blessing to some….but I’m still deciding.

-Amber Lawson

we start the collective…

Social [Media] Butterflies has been created as a professional, non-competitive collective. its founder, Charlie Helen of Charlie Design, firmly believes that customers and clients align with particular personalities in social media and therefore each “butterfly” will have a role, place, skill and focus to share. Butterflies who will contribute don’t all have a business in social media though…  however each has a unique voice, passion and strength. Social [Media] Butterflies are from fields such as “life commentators”, youth, brand, employee, music, business, and news.

At the time of writing there are no professional groups for social media “professionals” in Adelaide. Some international groups have formed though and we do have the #socadl presence (#socadl is for anyone interested in social media). That said, many groups form and then fail due to competitiveness, lack of leadership and/or purpose. Im hoping all #adelaide ones thrive and prosper!!

The Social [Media] Butterflies collective will be used to showcase talent, provide a networking stream, commentary and avenue for professionals to hone their craft. The philosophy remains : to help people. experiment. have fun. demonstrate. raise awareness.