Virginie Glaenzer talks with four panelists about growing up on social media. Alyssa Caro wants to turn social media into a career. Roxane, a business owner, shifted from optimism to skepticism after 15 years. The group explores whether social media's benefits outweigh its harms.
Chapters
Before we start this conversation, we're gonna begin as we always do with what I call a tour de table, and you're gonna have, each of us, a chance to tell us your name, what you do, and why you're interested in this topic. Let's try to be brief and keep it under a minute. So why don't we begin with Alyssa?
Hi guys, my name is Alyssa Caro, and I am a student, a senior at Berkeley College, the School of Business. I'm getting my bachelor's degree in general business, and I'm currently interning for Virginie at Acorn Oak as a social media intern. I've been getting more and more interested in social media recently just because it's such a big part of everyone's life, and now you can like make a career out of working on it. So I find it very interesting how you blend that kind of life and work. Together now. So I'm really excited to be on the podcast.
Great.
Well, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Alex?
Hi, my name is Alex Glaenzer, and I am currently a student at the University of Rhode Island. I am undeclared, so I still don't have my career path set, but I have worked with Virginie in the past with marketing and social media, and I think that this topic is really interesting to me because I grew up in the generation that by the time you reached the age of 12 or 13, everyone had Snapchat, Instagram, and it became a very big part of our lives. So I think that it's going to be really interesting to talk about everyone's perspective and the good and the bad of it, because I personally think that there's a lot of bad and not too much good. But thank you for having me on here.
My pleasure. It's already interesting. Can't wait. Roxane.
Well, I love that we have a skeptic because I find it's very boring when there's panels and everybody agrees with each other. So that's good. I am on my 7th or 8th career, so I've done a lot of different things in my life. I was very active in social media starting back in 2005, and I gave a lot of talks to the business community. I was very excited about social media, this holistic ability to connect with anyone in the world on our shared interest was very exciting to me. I've flipped almost 180 degrees now because I frankly was one of the naive optimists who didn't realize how social media could be turned against us as humans and as communities. But I still I'm holding out that we're sort of in the training wheels stage and that people will mature a little bit and learn how to use the tools a little more effectively. So I'm a business owner and also an artist.
Very nice. Thank you for leading that conversation. And before we begin, Dominique.
Hi, my name is Dominique Thomas and I am a senior at Berkeley College. I'm currently interning at Acorn Oak. I am a social media intern along with Alicia. And why I chose this topic, this topic is interesting to me because social media has grown from since I was 10. I remember 10, 9, I created a Facebook page and then from there everything, I just have ended up having, you know, Instagram, social media, Snapchat, just all these other platforms that you can communicate with others. And I'm just really excited to speak on the good and the bad and how social media has impacted all of our lives. So thank you for having me.
My pleasure. So I shared with you what happened to me a few weeks ago on Twitter when I questioned a tweet that the way that Thomas Calloway was treated facing up to a year in jail. And as a reminder, Thomas Calloway is the man who slapped the butt of a news anchor while on a race. The morning when I woke up, I had 700 replies to one tweet. And for those like me who have less than 1,000 followers on Twitter, it never ever happens. 80% of the responses were negative, threatening, or just mean. I felt attacked, I panicked. I was actually afraid that someone posted, would post something negative, a negative review on Google on my business. And I remember during the day I could feel my heartbeat, my sweaty hands. It was exactly the same symptom than before going on stage until I remember that I didn't know any of those people. And I could clearly see that there was a lot of bots and trolls Only in the afternoon did I finally realize that this was the illusion of the social game. So when I asked you, Alex, Alicia, and Dominique, if this ever happened to you, all of you started telling me that, yeah, I've had people who I know posted something negative about me. I was just blown away. And so I decided that we needed to bring forth this topic to better understand your experience in social media as a generation, as Alex pointed out, who grew up with it. And how do you actually deal with this? So Roxanne, why don't you lead us into this discussion, which I'm really forward to listening to your inputs and insights.
