Hello!
My name is Victoria Lam, and I am currently an MLIS student at UBC.
Hopefully what follows isn’t too much of a rambling confession.
I, like many others, have a love/hate relationship with social media. I was “late” to join Facebook when it first became popular for the reasons you might guess. I didn’t understand the point of it, I wanted to resist creating an online persona. That resistance only lasted so long before the pressures of being connected all the time got the better of me. I used Facebook for six good years to connect with “friends.” As privacy issues became more apparent, I started becoming more distant with the platform, removing functions such as “the wall” until I was just using it to exchange messages and to “creep” on people I hadn’t spoken to in ages.
It was a fateful day in 2011 when I quit Facebook. I was living in Micronesia with my husband and there was a rather large earthquake. We sat in our living room like idiots trying to remember the procedures of what to do during an earthquake–or rather, trying to figure out the physics of how we could both get under our tiny coffee table with our dog, but thankfully the earthquake stopped. Immediately after I wanted to find a source online to see if there was more information. My husband excitedly suggested we check Facebook!
At the time I thought ‘What?! Why is Facebook the first place you want to check?! Shouldn’t we be checking some government sites to see if there are any anticipated aftershocks?! Why Facebook?!’ Sure enough Facebook was booming with comments on the quake.
Our inability to detach from Facebook even in extreme situations, and the increasing privacy issues were ultimately the reasons we left.
Looking back at that event now, I judged too harshly and acted too brashly in leaving Facebook. Though I am still not on Facebook, I can now recognize its potential in disseminating information, especially during disasters. Facebook was the first to report the quake, government sites had nothing noted on the event until later. Following the quake there was a sort of community formed discussing the event–which was quite valuable.
My current use of social media is quite limited. For a course last year I started using Twitter, I found it incredibly overwhelming. I’ve been warming up to it and like that I can curate the types of information I receive. I use it more as a news gathering site rather than a ‘social’ site with friends. I also use Instagram, being selective of the accounts I follow and that follow me. I also have a Linked-In account that I’d like to be using more effectively, but currently it’s not very active. Finally, I had a Tumblr site to document my life in Micronesia, but since we moved, it has been inactive.
I’m looking forward to this class, and exploring different ways Social Media can be used!