As teens grow and discover what they’re interested in, social media will become less of a factor in their lives senior Jessica Vanahill said.

“Since social media is so expansive, as people find their niche in the world they will start using social media less,” she said.

Vanahill used to have several social media accounts but deleted them several years ago.

“It’s definitely overused,” Vanahill said. “I think it’s very valuable to step away from social media.”

Having deleted his social media as well, Heeb feels it was distracting from other aspects of his life.

“I’ve been trying to eliminate all distractions from my life lately,” he said. “I used to use social media. I just didn’t find it very fun or useful.”

Students who have never used any of the more common social media sites–Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat–also see the downsides.

“For example, for some people it might become too big of a part of their life to the point where it overpowers communicating with people in real life,” freshman Ethan Carroll said. “Also, it provides that anonymity in certain cases that some people could take advantage of.”

Carroll currently only uses Tumblr, but he may consider trying some of the more popular sites in the future.

According to Vanahill the main reason for deleting her social media ac- counts was the permanence of everything she posted.

“I’m very intimidated by that and I don’t want to try to put things about my- self online, even my opinions or something, because I feel like they’ll change,” she said.

Social media repels some because it is so time consuming, distracting and permanent. Rabiola described the large-scale effects it may have on society.

“People oftentimes put their best selves forward,” Rabiola said. “That’s part of their lives, but it’s not all of their lives, so people start trying to live up to that and they can’t. Then, they start thinking, ‘I need to be doing this,’ ‘I need to
be perfect at everything’ and I think it leads to some of the anxiety we have, is trying to live up to that.”

Teachers React

Though teenagers are most often associated with social media, the number of active teachers on social media has grown. CTE teacher Nolan Henderson uses Twitter to communicate with his students and post assignments.

“I’m human, just because I’m a teacher doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t get to use social media and express myself like others,” Henderson said. “It’s very easy to post assignments and links to other things for my students.”

Other teachers, like English teacher Elaine Elliott, use Twitter to post pic- tures of dogs and micro pigs, and the occasional selfie.

“I share my Twitter account with students because it was started to com- municate practice times with softball players,” Elliott said. “I treat Twitter very much as an extension for work.”

Social studies teacher Adam Leitel tweets about his dog, the Lakers basketball team and happenings within the school.

Because students and teachers are now able to see more about each other through social media than ever before, awkward situations may arise.

“It’s not my job to [see] something negative or foolish a student says and bring it up in class and let that affect our relationship, I’m not about that,” Henderson said. “However, as a person/parent who has a child and I’m trying to raise a child in this world effectively, you bet I’m judging you, and no matter what somebody tells you they are judging these things too.”