by Alana Bridges
Editor-in-chief
The following story was written by a student on the staff of The Jaguar Times as part of Hilliard Bradley High School’s Journalism Production course.
Social media consumes students' everyday life, from snapping selfies on Snapchat to sharing your favorite childhood memories on Instagram. These prominent apps in our daily lives have become essential for some students, but the question is which app do they use the most? The Jaguar Times dives into the social media lives of Bradley students and staff to see what they spend the most of their free time on.
Social media apps come and go but some stay for life. For instance, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and TikTok (previously known as Musically) have gained the most popularity over the past few years. Freshman Lauren Schuler mentions, “I spend a lot of time on Snapchat.” Most students spend the majority of their time on Snapchat because it is a quick and easy way to have a conversation. Lauren continues, “even though I spend a lot of time on Snapchat I really like TikTok the best”. TikTok, which is known for its ten second dances, crazy challenges and funny audios was released in September of 2016 and has grown into an intriguing source of entertainment.
Granted TikTok has made a very big splash in the social media world, Katy Grainger (11) says, “I really like Instagram. I spend a lot of time watching dog videos”. Instagram is full of cute dog photos, short videos, memes, and my personal favorite, food videos. Even though I favor Twitter over any social media app I do spend a heavy chunk of time scrolling through Instagram and TikTok. I find Twitter to be an easy way to spend time. I don’t post much but I read snippets of recent news articles, watch short interviews about sports and read funny quotes. All of my other apps are more for comedy than anything else.
Though most people associate social media with teens and young adults, many teachers at Bradley have various social media accounts. Algebra one teacher Miss Kowalski says, “TikTok takes up the most of my time but it is not my favorite because it does take up so much time”. As a younger teacher, she likes to scroll through her feed and look at the funny videos. She elaborates, “Instagram or snapchat are my favorite because they came out when I was in high school so I have had them my whole life”. Her opinion is not different from many others as Snapchat and Instagram have been out for the duration of most young adults and teenagers lives.
Social media is a great way to share our thoughts and highlights from our day, no matter what app you use. What app do you use the most, if any at all? Do you prefer a social media-less world?