Grandma in Social Media

Image by Leo Boudreau via Flickr

Grandma in Social Media

            My experience or lack there of in social media reads like the beloved children’s novel “Alice in Wonderland”. For those of you who are not familiar with the century old tale written by Lewis Carroll, it pertains to a young girl following a white rabbit down a hole. She has grand adventures and meets many a strange creature along the way.

Chapter 1:

The journey begins for Grandma, not in an English meadow and a chance encounter with an unusual white rabbit, but in chair in small lakeside room and the creature is not soft and white, rather a hard, black, rectangular box. Like Alice curiosity gets the better of me and I pursue my rabbit into the preverbal hole. The chase through the tunnel seems lengthy. Then I seem to stop falling, it was like I was frozen. I waited and waited, finally things began to move in front of me again. The darkness of the tunnel was chased away by vibrant colours and then unusual things started appearing out of nowhere. Although it was all very exciting, I couldn’t help but think how unusual this place was. Suddenly there was a steady stream of white light, then a strange tiny figure appeared creature appeared beside a word. I forced myself to stare straight at the glaring light and I could make out the word “Google “. The tiny figure beside was a cartoon depiction of an Astronaut. “How odd” I proclaimed.  If only my friends and family could see me now. Falling through the great tunnel called the internet. How proud they would be.

The bottom materialized, or in this case the Google search page materialized. Now what? I decided to continue following the rabbit. So, I typed “what is social media?”. This led me to a space with many choices and I looked at each one, but they didn’t seem to match, much like Alice’s room of locked doors. How frustrating I thought to myself.  How would I figure out which one to choose? I tried one and it didn’t open, paged expired. I returned to the original space and tried again. “Oh my” this flooded my screen with ads and nonsense. I returned to the original space. Frustrated and overwhelmed I shrank down in my chair and begin to weep.  Tears roll down my cheeks as I attempted to find a way to understand.  Let me try this again. Scroll up. Oh no! where did it go? What’s happening? The letters are huge? What did I do? “There is no sense in crying” I told myself. Try again. Perhaps the magnification scale on the bottom right corner of the page will fix my error. Oh no! Now it’s too small I will never be able to read and understand. I took to the keyboard and began to maneuver around the screen. I clicked on something. “Well done” I praised myself. I had returned the screen to a readable size. With a slight sigh I began to scan over the information again.

Then a headline, like Alice’s golden key. appears. I clicked and an explanation in plain language unveiled before me, A curious feeling came over me as I read, could it be so simple as that?

The feeling wouldn’t go away as I read through the text. No, it wasn’t that easy. There was “platforms, engagement, hashtag, likes and followers” just to name a few. Absolutely a strange and frustrating place. Whatever was I to do? I was there all alone. Will no one help me?

Stay tuned for Chapter 2, The Pool of Platforms