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The Role of Social Media throughout the Pandemic by Alicja Wladyslawska
The pandemic has changed many things, including how we use and interact with online spaces. As the world was shut in, online services have opened the floodgates into a new cyber world of communication and entertainment that helped us get through the many lockdowns we have endured in the past year. How has social media changed to aid us during isolation?
Information Feed
Though the first news of a pandemic breaking out was met with jokes and light-hearted commentary online, the world soon started to understand the gravity of the situation. The focus shifted to information about the pandemic – Instagram feeds and Twitter timelines were flooded with information about the pandemic, the statistics of countries affected by the virus, and social precautions to be taken to protect ourselves. Content creators started encouraging users to stay at home and take care of themselves, and we slowly started locking ourselves up in our houses, turning to our screens in hopes of reassurance and understanding.
Blurred lines
As education and jobs had to suddenly move to online spaces, the lines between our home lives and formal lives have slowly become blurred. Not only can this put more stress onto us, but also harm our time management skills, as it is hard to distinguish when we ought to be working and when we are supposed to be taking a break. This can cause us to overwork ourselves or lose focus on things we need to do. The pressure of deadlines and an overall lowered mood could also contribute to an overall worse effort in the things we do, and a gradual build-up of stress that can become overwhelming.
Social media does become a sort of ‘safe space’, or even a form of escapism from this stressful world of working at home. Connecting with real-life friends and family through messaging services or even making new online friends through different platforms was a way many of us dealt with the stresses of lockdown. There was also an increase of popularity in online gaming and multiplayer games, in which friends and family could have fun together.
There was in fact an overall spike in the digital workforce. Because we were forced to adapt to working at home there has been an increased interest in buying or building personal computers or workstations. This was in fact a hobby I personally picked up over lockdown and hope to build my own PC soon.
Journeys of self-discovery
Another surprising side-effect of lockdown no one was really expecting was a journey of self-discovery in everyone who had to stay home. The most beautiful part of lockdown in my opinion was the fact that while staying at home, we had no one and nothing to get ready for or present ourselves to, which gave us months upon months to reflect upon ourselves and discover more about ourselves that we may have never known. We do our own research on style and expression on social media and find out who we really are when there is no one around. Pinterest boards, Instagram posts and Twitter threads are all places we get information and inspiration from, to shape ourselves to what we see fit.
As we’ve moved most of our life online, social media has become the focal point of most of the things we do. Communicating with relatives abroad, learning online, and discovering new ideas have all been ways in which we’ve interacted with the online world these past few months and will probably be here to stay; even as we slowly open up the gates to the outside world and return to our normal lives.