Welcome to the Internet

            The first Internet experience for many of us most likely started with asking your parents permission to even use the computer. Born in 1994, my family didn’t have a computer right away. Computers for my friends and I were such an unfamiliar idea, but we knew that you could access the internet and play video games for free, which was a pretty cool thing to have for a 7 or 8 year old.

            Other than playing as Pablo Sanchez on Backyard Baseball or Petey Wheeler in Backyard Soccer (both foundational video games of my childhood), my friends and I enjoyed websites such as Miniclip.com or Addictinggames.com. Both of these websites provided something that really no other generation of kids had prior to us “millennials”. We had free online games that we could all play at home and go back to school the next day and compare scores and levels. The progression of games and gaming consoles from what we had when I was 10 compared to what there is now has never been done before and to be a part of the generation that has been able to experience it is thrilling.

            Social media certainly was not around when I was in grade school, yet by the time I was in middle school, MySpace was the modern day Instagram. I wasn’t quite allowed to have a Facebook account yet, though I am pretty sure I made one behind my parents back and said I was 18, which would make me around 30 years old currently. MySpace was a great way for all of my friends and I as seventh and eight graders to get that first glimpse of what was to come. I feel like kids nowadays don’t even know what MySpace is or was. MySpace gave us all creativity and interaction outside of school and for a kid in junior high, it was addicting.

            I see social media only growing from here. It’s hard to say what the next big “MySpace” will be, but I believe Instagram is certainly at its peak. I feel Facebook and even Twitter may be on the decline. I know I certainly don’t use Facebook nearly as much as I used to when it was extremely popular. I pretty much simply use Facebook for either school groups or un-tagging myself from pictures that people who still use Facebook post.

            As us young adults grow older and become more professional with our lives and careers, there certainly has to be a boundary that we have to watch out for in terms of what other people can see. As professionals, we have to respect ourselves as well as our audience. More and more people use social media everyday and more and more people get better at using social media everyday. Social media continues to get more personal and we have to watch what we post and when we post it. In conclusion, I only see social media growing and gaining more popularity.