Illini Bluffs - Social Media & Our Post-Secondary Hopes

We live in an extraordinarily interconnected society. But that’s really not new. Truth is, we always have. And those of us who grew up in small towns understand that reality, perhaps, better than most. Seems like having the inside scoop on the goings-on of my hometown, population 3,372, was almost an olympic sport when I was growing up. There was a crowd-sourced web of information gathering woven into the fabric of daily life. And, for the most part, the intel delivered through this web was fairly accurate. But it was also a powerful source of discomfort for those who suffered the indignity of false accusations and undeserved whacks at their reputation. When I was a senior in high school, there were no cell phone videos, no Twitter, and no Instagram or Facebook. So, while the crowd-sourced intelligence-gathering woven into the fabric of my hometown might have known who was gathered at the rock pile on a Friday night, red Solo cups in-hand, there was no formal record of it. The events that took place and the words uttered there may have resulted in damaged friendships or local reputations, those words, events, and activities floated upon memory alone, and were seldom, if ever, formally captured.

Today, we live in a very different world. That’s not really even a question. Social media and its vast reach into our lives, granted of course, by us, has made that so. The question before us — really — is, how will we make the most of it? You already know some of it. But I’m guessing there are a few things you can do to leverage this new reality you haven’t yet considered. Let’s take a few minutes today and explore that.