Social Media and Self Development

I did not have any social media until I was 17 and until then and even a few years afterwards, I was not the kind of person you would ever think to put themselves out there on a public platform.

Once I started being active on social media, I noticed a visible change in myself. At first it was not anything big, but I noticed that I was growing out of my shell every time I messaged somebody or wrote a post. This is when I discovered my personal learning network [PLN] and over time, I had interacted and built relationships with people who match my intellect, my energy and perspective.

https://youtu.be/_Fby_VgVpno

This is extremely important because I realised at a young age that interacting with people who do not have the same mindset as me will be detrimental to my development and ambition.

My PLN began on the normal social media like Instagram and Facebook but then also moved onto LinkedIn where I connect with people who are working in my industries/fields of interest and by knowing, or rather interacting with these people consistently, I can equip myself with the best first perspective knowledge and build myself to fit into that environment.

I also recently began building a coaching persona on both Instagram and LinkedIn as I feel that through helping and coaching people, I can have this as a coping mechanism of my own.

During the PDE module, we did an interesting self-development activity, called the elevator pitch. In this, we had to summarise our personality and interest as if to tell somebody about ourselves in under a minute [the amount of time it takes between a floor in an elevator], and it got us thinking about how we would present ourselves to another person.

This was a particularly interesting activity as it taught me about good self-reflection but also about how much I have developed through the years. Additionally, the elevator pitch activity gave me a great indication of how my social media profile should be structured and how the profile should be an extension of my personality and reflect every aspect of myself. It should be a testament to the kind of person that I am.

Through social media, I greatly improved my communication and interactive skills. I defined my personality to what is now; creative, empathetic, and colourful; and my confidence continues to grow every time I publish a post. The key lesson from this is that social media can be particularly important to not only personal development, but also assurance of self.