Social Media Preferences

Like many other current undergraduates, I’m in the Facebook group for the incoming WashU class of 2021. In that group, a lot of the prospective students have been posting a short paragraph about themselves and their interests along with a couple photos. I’ve been casually reading through some of their posts if they show up on my newsfeed, and a common theme I have noticed is that a lot of people (or at least, enough that I have noticed) have been saying something along the lines of “I don’t use Facebook much, but check out my Instagram instead or “I only made Facebook for college purposes but here’s my Instagram handle.” I thought this was interesting because when my friends and I were graduating high school, Facebook and Instagram were equally popular among students. However, I know among my older friends who hang out with my oldest brother, Facebook was the dominant source of social media. Even though there is only three year difference between me and these incoming students, there is a clear preference for Instagram among those students. I guess I should not be surprised because I have always been told that younger kids only used Instagram and/or Twitter. For example, a friend of mine who worked as a camp counselor over the summer had told me that all of the kids in her group (middle schoolers) only had Instagram and thought Facebook was for “old people.”

I think I was just surprised to see this preference play out where I could actually observe it rather than me hearing it from someone. For the students who made Facebook for the purposes of college, their profile will probably have more of a professional tone because their main goal is to connect with other students, be part of groups, or know when events are happening. They won’t have those embarrassing middle school pictures and statuses that my friends and I all had. It’s a different use of Facebook for them. I am interested to see what the preference for social media will be in a few years from now.