The
first social media tool I have used is QQ, which is kind of Chinese version of
"skype". I experienced the sudden popularity of QQ when I was an
undergraduate student in 2006. Back then, I used QQ to make friends and share
my life with them.
Now
I am in American while lots of my friends and family are in China. I often use
QQ to have video chat with my father and brothers, which makes it possible to
share our life with each other and see each other’s face. QQ offers me a way to
maintain relationship with my family and friends. As Rainie and Wellman (2013) mentioned, we now
use social media to maintain network. When my best friends in China feel
confused or emotional, they always find me on QQ and then I can listen to them
and make suggestions. I can often check my friends QQ zone to find out what
they are doing these days. Knowing their updated news make me feel I am not
isolated from their life.
It's amazing how well these tools can keep us connected to our network! I remember being in college far from home in the days of landline phones and no Internet. Calls were expensive and I talked to my Mom once a week for a few minutes. We still live far away (well,not as far as China), but Facebook keeps us so much more connected that we were in the past.
ReplyDeleteYeah, those social media tools enable us to maintain relationships with someone we care about. Actually, I had gone through the same situation. When I was in senior high school, I could not connect with the internet. I often used the landline phone to call my parents who worked in a different province once a month. I cannot believe I lived with that. Now, I really embrace those social media tools!
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