By Alyson Lusky/reporter
The seven major habits of a social media user, specifically those of a college student, can be a main concern of both online awareness and online safety, TCC’s employee online learning director told a NE audience.
Alma Martinez-Egger presented Seven Habits of Highly Connected Social Media Users Feb. 25.
Speaking to both faculty and students, Martinez-Egger presented both positive and negative habits of social media users through a PowerPoint, several YouTube examples and audience participation.
Martinez-Egger started by collecting index cards from the audience addressing their most used social media sites and personal uses for those sites. She correctly predicted Facebook as the number one most used website by the audience.
“Mark Zuckerberg put [the] social in social media,” she said. “He created socialization.”
Martinez-Egger offered a personal definition of social media.
“Social media is an interactive and collaborative Internet social communication instrument,” she said.
Each social media site is collaborative by having users on both sides of the screens interactive, which is distinguishable from newspaper and or radio, Martinez-Egger said.
Martinez-Egger outlined the negative and positive traits of college-age students who frequent social media. Her examples included students nearly expelled for lack of online awareness and many adults who lost their jobs.
While the opening focused more on the negative habits of social media users, Martinez-Egger flipped the switch halfway through and began to look at the more positive habits.
“The Landscaper,” her label for the fifth habit, “is self-aware of his/her perception on social networking sites,” she said.
Martinez-Egger warned students about geotagging and privacy settings. She told students it was important to be cautious when posting their locations on a public forum and suggested mindful awareness and just thinking before posting.
Audience members like NE Campus student Andrew Little, 20, provided feedback and asked questions throughout the presentation. Little said his regularly used social media site was Facebook and defined himself as mindful and aware of what he posted online.
“Most of it was common sense, which sadly a lot of people these days lack,” he said. “I can easily see how this [information] can be valuable to a lot of people my age.”
