When I was around 12 years old, I came across the term ‘pen friends’ I didn’t really knew what it meant until my elder brother told me it refers to the friends you make in the internet. Well, as a 12 year old introverted kid that was all I needed! I immediately rushed to a nearby cyber cafe(yes, that was the cheapest and only way to access the internet back then!) and started surfing the web. That’s when I made my first social media account on Orkut- which no longer exits. I still remember those days very vividly. Even though I was not very active, I loved the concept of able to communicate with friends in such an efficient manner( remember it was still the early 2000’s then). It was around in 2010 when I made my first Facebook and gmail account. It was also the time when I underwent the phase of social media addiction. In school, as a shy kid I didn’t used to talk much with people. I had a limited set of friends and with girls, there was atleast a distance of a kilometer! So, facebook was the best medium to grab and seek attention. I used to google every single day things like ‘top funny posts for maximum likes’ and so on. My facebook timeline of 2013-2014 is full of jokes, trolls and pictures of cats and dogs where I had tagged my friends. Getting a like was a pleasure on its own and a comment was a treat especially if it is from someone you wanted to talk for a long time. I remember spending ours on photoshop trying to make my hair blonde, changing the background of my picture( for which I went to a studio and paid rs 200 just to upload in Facebook!) to that of mountains and beaches or with celebrities like Priyanka Chopra and then posting it was a very cheesy caption like “born to impress, not to express!!!” My english was just terrible and so was my sense of punctuation. When I read my old facebook messages and posts I just want to bury myself!( now I know why girls never used to reply me back!)
However, since then I have changed drastically and so had my use of social media sites. My use of facebook is now very limited, infact I just open it once a month to check birthdays or if there is a really really good picture of me( no photoshopped this time!) which I want to upload or if I want to update my work details. Apart from that, facebook has almost become obsolete. Now I have shifted more to Instagram, there too my usage is very different than what it would be for a 13 year old me. I ‘maintain’ a very ‘classy’ profile and somehow try to reflect my personality through my profile. The only which has not changed in me since the last 7 years is my introvertedness. I still am shy in talking to people, especially girls( as usual!) and I still seek attention although not as badly as earlier. So this is how I made a jump from Facebook to Insta, with the same purpose as before but now I use in a much less desperate and pretentious manner.(But I don’t know if I will held the same view for a 20year old me after a decade! :P)
Social media management CIA 1- Keshav's blog 