We all have the same 24 hours in a day, that’s why it does not phase me when I see my peers being productive within those 24 hours. Sometimes it may be going outside for a healthy jog, or going to the gym to exercise. However, for most people it might not mean any of those things because they choose to utilize their time in other ways. I have witnessed in my generation just how fascinating it is to see teenagers taking advantage of the different social media platforms. Instead of wasting their time on it, they are using social media as a marketing tool.
I can remember calling one of my friends during our winter break and it seemed to me that every time I did he was always doing something productive. Whether if it was editing pictures he had just taken of people the previous day, or possibly recording music with friends until 4 a.m. Whatever it was that they were doing, it was always something creative, something that would be beneficial to them, and most importantly, something that they wanted to share with the Internet.
After a while, I started to realize that my friends and most American teenagers have a lot in common. We all like using the Internet, but only a few of us take advantage of what the Internet can offer. This reminded me of a quote Harvey Mackay once said. It goes, “Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back.” Time is and always will be an asset in our life as well as on the Internet, so if you are spending time on the Internet daily, why not use it to promote yourself?
Remember when our parents used to fear the fact that we were on the computer 24/7 because they couldn’t tolerate the thought of us doing “God knows what” on them? Little did they know that some of us kids were just caught in the social media world. We were obsessed with it. To some of us teens, it was fascinating because social media became this huge opportunity for us to easily connect with our friends. However, some of us may have even asked, “how were these sites going to tell us what activities our friends were doing when we weren’t with them?”
Then social media grew on us, and it became more than just social gathering websites. Social media became an important tool for people to display themselves to the world. Once people stop looking at them as friendly sites and started seeing them as ways to promote clothing, music, and artwork, they became great marketing tools. One thing I have noticed from my observations is that as a marketing tool, social media does not fail.
Not too long ago there used to be only a few ways for musicians to share their work with their audience. Albums sales, concerts, and radio broadcasts were really the only methods artists could use to gain popularity back before the Internet became such an influence on society. Our generation, however, has taken Internet use to a whole other level, profiting from its advantage and, thanks to the genius of social media, it’s fairly simple.