Social Media and Students

At university this term I've taken on the documentary module as part of my course, which I've actually been shooting for this past week. My group's documentary 'Social Creatures' is all about intergenerational perspectives on social media which means we've been asking around for people's opinions on certain aspects of social media. Last week we hosted a conversational pizza night which consisted of two generations in a room along with a few microphones and a camera. We asked them to have a general discussion on the topic of 'social media' as if we (the crew) weren't in the room and just let it play out from there. The conversation we recorded was incredibly interesting - and long for that matter; an hour of conversational footage followed by individual ten-minute interviews were recorded, something I'll have to edit down to four minutes worth of documentary - god help me.

On Thursday we were out in the streets of Falmouth scouting for people to answer a few questions about social media and to state their opinions on it. We went out during the day to shoot on camera and then again at night to find some slightly intoxicated people to give us their truthful opinions through audio recordings. Again, we received some really interesting responses on the topic, specifically to do with 'fakeness' on social media and some of the negative impacts of it. All of which you'll have to wait to hear about when our documentary is released! We intend to make a longer cut, along with the four-minute hand in cut, due to how interesting the shooting turned out to be - turns out a lot of people have quite strong opinions on this matter.

Anyway, because I've been so involved in the topic of social media this week I thought I'd hone in on how social media impacts us negatively at university. Don't get me wrong, social media is an incredible tool for connecting with people and can be incredibly beneficial to Freshers in particular with its ability to bring people closer more quickly. However, there is also such a fake presence to social media, we choose to upload only the good parts of our lives which can make everything seem better than it might actually be.

I remember before I went to uni I'd look through social media to see other people's freshers experiences. It excited me, seeing how much fun everyone looked to be having and I couldn't wait to experience it myself. The time for my own freshers experience came around and I did honestly have a lot of fun, but looking back now, because of my high expectations, it doesn't surprise me that I was left feeling slightly disappointed afterwards. Half the nights out I can't actually remember due to the alcohol consumption (sorry Mum) and the few that I actually do remember did all carry a slight awkwardness. But what do you expect when you're thrown into a room of people you barely know and expected to dance.

I think part of the problem lies in school's preparations for sending us off to university. Unfortunately, a lot of the time schools only really care about sending their students off to university in order to make the school's performance look better. They tend to make a big deal about how great university life is and focus in on only the appealing aspects in order to make us want to go. These expectations are then set inside our heads which can lead to problems when they don't become apparent in our own experiences of university life. Schools are getting better at this though, alternatives to university are becoming more popular and more talked about, but there are still negative connotations attached to the routes that don't all end in degrees and there is still a genuine pressure that you feel as a student to please people and continue your education. I definitely felt it and for me in particular it was very much a case of Falmouth Uni or nothing. I wasn't fussed about going anywhere else but equally I didn't know what else there was I could really do. I wouldn't change my decision now however because through my experiences I've learnt so much about independence and I've met some really lovely people - oh and I enjoy my course, which is the main thing I'm here for, but interestingly the least talked about (?).

Going back to this in relation to social media, I think because we are sent off being told we will have 'the time of our lives' at university, we immediately feel a pressure to live up to this standard. This is where social media comes in. It's the only real (oh the irony) way to show people what we are up to in the present, unless of course we were to wait until being home for the holidays to tell people of our experiences. Social media sites allow us to show all of our friends what a great time we are having all at once, so why wouldn't we post to social media? The problem is, when everyone is posting their best bits, specifically talking about university here, we are then left with a glamourised belief of what all university experiences should live up to. The negative impact this can then have on those who don't feel as if their experience 'fits the bill' is ridiculously strong and unfortunately growing.

I've been doing a bit of reading around the subject this morning which has lead me to a dissertation by a Cardiff Metropolitan University student on the impact social media can have on the mental health of university students. The paper mentions a study that reported a positive correlation between FoMo (Fear of Missing Out) on social media and anxiety and depression. The study also states that those with more of an online presence suffer with higher levels of anxiety and loneliness. "For such youth, viewing social media posts of others' activities may deem one's social media experiences as negative and may also have a subsequent negative emotional impact." (Barry et al 2017). Feeling like a proper university student by referencing studies in my blog post oh wow, but it is interesting to note that there is a genuine link between what we see online and how it impacts us mentally. Unfortunately, there isn't really a lot we can do regarding what we see of other people's lives on social media, that is up to the individual themselves to post, however I do think it's important that prospective university students in particular are taught not to believe everything they see on social media regarding university experience as a lot of it is glamourised.

Since researching and asking around about social media for my documentary, I've reflected on my own personal online presence. I'll be completely honest here, there are some of my own posts on my instagram from my time as a fresher that I remember feeling like I'd bigged up a bit, all for the sake of showing everyone I was having fun. I was so excited to have met all these new people and I wanted to show all my friends back home - there's nothing wrong with that and I have met some genuinely brilliant people here, but there was a part of me that almost felt a need to post about it in order to prove something to people. Reflecting back on it now, I wonder if it was almost acting as a way to prove to myself that I had made the right decision and was enjoying myself. That along with the fact everybody else I knew at this time was also uploading to social media about their new friends and new experiences, I think there is a part of you feels like you should be posting about it too.

Knowing what I know now, I'd say don't be afraid to ignore this feeling, you don't owe anything to anyone, you don't have to prove to an online audience that you're enjoying yourself. If you know you're enjoying yourself then that should be enough; equally if you want to post about your time then do that too. I think the key is to balance it out, it's nice to show people what you're up to, as long as you're not fooling yourself or others into a false sense of enjoyment. I've taken a step back from all of this recently and am genuinely seeing much more of an appreciation for things in my life because of it.

Looking back now, I think I actually made it worse for myself by posting so much over the freshers period. When I then opened up to people later on in the year about feeling lonely they were shocked and said "but it looked like you were having such a great time?". Of course nobody was going to reach out to me asking if I was enjoying myself or if I was doing alright when I was already posting about the enjoyment I was having on my social media. I also wonder, now knowing what I know from that study on social media presence and loneliness, whether my own experience with loneliness at uni was brought on by my strong presence on social media, as well as the other reasons I've mentioned before.

What I'd take from this, if anything at all, is to not let what other people post online define you or your own experiences. We, as social creatures (slight documentary plug there) are always comparing ourselves to others and we can really get wrapped up in the online world to a point that it negatively impacts us. Just be mindful of 'fakeness' online when you next compare another person's post to your life and in regards to the online representations of university experiences, if you don't feel your experience lived up to what you expected then don't feel disheartened because it gets better and a lot of it is just down to having high expectations to start with.

I'll link the Barry et al study below for anyone that's interested (I'm not going to properly reference it, I do enough of that at uni) and thanks to anyone for taking the time to read this, it's truly appreciated. Hope everyone had a good weekend and I'd love to hear people's opinions on this topic so feel free to send me a message.

Until next week!

BTS photos from Thursday's documentary shooting

Barry et al study: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319559179_Adolescent_social_media_use_and_mental_health_from_adolescent_and_parent_perspectives