MLIS Journey '98

If there has been one constant in my life all these years, it's that my mental health has had its share of ups and downs. Most notably, the COVID-19 pandemic totally destroyed it, with me being completely consumed by fear and anxiety, and even depression at first, due to the unprecedented stress of being confined inside and having to adapt to virtual learning among many other things. The pandemic aside, however, there are many other things that certainly shape our mental health, for better or worse, and social media is a prime setting for such things. I was both intrigued and unsurprised simultaneously to read about how even (or perhaps especially ) celebrities such as Tom Holland are not immune to the potentially corrosive effects social media use may have on us all from a mental standpoint. As Holland noted, these platforms can be "overstimulating" and or overwhelming, causing us to "get caught up and spiral," as has happened to myself given that COVID basica...

I first joined Twitter in 2014 back in high school, alongside Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Unlike the latter three social media sites, however, I've almost never used Twitter for casual purposes for a number of reasons. For one thing, I'd always found its features to be fairly boring compared to those of the other apps, and many of my friends and peers used the others more often. But most of all, I have come to see Twitter as having greater use for more professional purposes. For example, I commonly retweet stuff pertaining to politics, my undergraduate major. Image Source: Screenshot It's because of the more professional lenses I viewed Twitter from that my presence on there has historically been on-and-off to put it bluntly. I've used it in times that I needed it, such as for an internship with the advocacy group Common Cause Illinois , where I learned to use it to spread awareness regarding political causes among other things, and once those times were done I ...