It’s hopeless. The extent of my history with social media is encompassed by the Facebook account I made in middle school. Actually, correction: my cousin made my Facebook account because I didn’t know what I was doing. I guess some things don’t change…
I’ve never been addicted to social media, but I’ve certainly used it as a crutch to waste time (and man, is it great at doing that). I’m sure it’s helped that I've limited myself to a single platform. I’ve yet to understand the appeal or purpose of stretching yourself across multiple profiles; then again, my hesitance in making new accounts has undoubtedly contributed to my overall social media illiteracy. I don’t use social media because I don’t know how to and I don’t know how to because I don’t use it. A good ol’ fashioned catch-22 that I haven’t had to come to terms with until I started Day and Age. I made an Instagram account just for the series and I still haven’t really found my footing, as D&A 19 suggests. That comic is basically an amalgam of multiple conversations I had with my friend Danny. Whenever I run into an Instagram speed bump, I immediately use my phone-a-friend lifeline and ring him up. The calls for aid have definitely petered out since I’ve gotten the gist of what I need to do to get by. I’m operating at the bare minimum at the moment: posting when a new comic/blog goes up, occasional story updates, and… not much else. It’s an odd, foreign feeling, struggling with something I feel like I should have no issue with. I have never felt like I truly earned the old man moniker until I started using Instagram.
I’ve always held that my generation grew up at the perfect time. We were young enough at the inauguration of the digital age to be fluent in text speech and touch screens, but old enough to know a time when we didn’t have any of that. We had to go outside and play with the neighborhood kids because we didn’t have iPads to keep us glued inside. But when emails, video chat, and social media opened up an entirely new system of communication, we had no issue picking it up. And I say we’re lucky because as adults, we are able to, I think, more easily detach ourselves from the technology that has taken over nearly all aspects of our lives. When the power goes out, we can light a candle, pick up a book, and be perfectly content.
For the kids who were handed a smartphone straight out the womb, a temporary internet outage preventing them from perusing Netflix is tantamount to a humanitarian crisis. They live and breathe digital air, and there’s a lot of good that can come from that: faster transmission and evolution of ideas and information, more varied and malleable forms of communication, greater interest in technology and coding. All I’m saying is that personally, I am very happy to straddle that middle ground. Yes, more and more often, I feel out of the loop with the trends and lingo of the younger generations, but that’s just the natural course of things. Instagram though… that pisses me off because it’s not “new” like Tik Tok, which I have absolutely no interest in engaging with (2 hip 4 me). Instagram and I should be pals, we grew up together! But it feels more like I’m the kid who never left their hometown while Instagram has traveled the world and moved onto bigger and better things. We finally crossed paths and caught up for dinner and I’m quickly realizing how much society has advanced and how far behind I am... Wow that got depressing.