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Social Media and Your College Life

Social Media and Your College Life
6/27/2011
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Angela Andaloro

As embarrassing as it is to admit, one of the coolest parts of selecting your school is telling everyone you know. A school hoodie used to be announcement enough but now, one of the first questions incoming freshmen ask is how they can find out their new school email – a requirement to add their school on Facebook.

Social media is an excellent outlet for communication between freshmen, students and administration, and even students and peer leaders. Many students who live on campus “meet” their roommates for the first time via Facebook. Students can also follow their schools on Twitter, as well as accounts designated for various clubs and organizations. With so many benefits, why wouldn’t college students look to social media as a way to jumpstart their college social lives?

The answer to that is simple: overexposure. Students forget just how open the Internet is. No matter how iron-clad you believe your privacy settings are, the information is out there to be passed around. Many students are concerned about this when it comes to photos, and rightly so – they are often warned of the dangers of posting sexually suggestive images, pictures of parties with illegal activities going on and other questionable material – but there are other ways social media can get students in trouble. Students have been known to voice their comments and complaints about teachers, classes and administration via social networking sites in recent years. When such complaints turn into rants and get out of hand, the administration takes action.

With such a delicate balance between helpful and harmful, how should a student handle social media? I believe in one rule: use social media for communication, not broadcasting. Social media can be great to communicate, ask questions and answer questions. Broadcasting your feelings and not expecting something to occur as a result, however, is unwise.

How do you keep your social media use safe and enjoyable?

Angela Andaloro is a rising junior at Pace University’s New York City campus, where she is double majoring in communication studies and English. Like most things in New York City, her life and college experience is far from typical – she commutes to school from her home in Flushing and took nearly a semester’s worth of classes online – but she still likes to hang out with friends, go to parties and feed her social networking addiction like your “average” college student.

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