Ever think you know a person until you add them on Facebook (or vice versa)? Consider your relationship with that person. In person, people behave the way they want to be perceived by you, while online they show a side of them that is meant for their “target audience”. I’ve noticed that the peers I graduated high school with tend to share more pictures and statuses on Facebook about exciting events in their lives, such as a trip they took or a school they got accepted to; while on Twitter these same people tweet a lot of complaints and rants and use more explicit language even on happy/humorous posts. I feel like the audience on Facebook is a broad range of acquaintances so the posts people make on there are more generic, as in posts that most people will relate to and enjoy seeing. I also feel like older people use Facebook the most so people my age tend to post “safe” things as to not upset any of their older relatives or acquaintances.

Meanwhile on Twitter, people are a lot less filtered and speak more so about what is on their minds. This may be because of hashtags where voicing your opinion through them makes it visible to other people around the world who care about the topic and hashtag. Facebook is more so for adding family and friends while the target audience on Twitter for most people is whoever they want it to be, instead of limited to people you know.

Both Facebook and Twitter are important to me. Facebook is a way to “see” my family members I don’t get to visit often and friends from other states I have lived in & countries I’ve visited. I check up on my Facebook friends & like their posts, yet I rarely post on there myself. I joke that my Mom posts for me because she constantly posts what she’s doing and tags me when I’m with her. I usually only post when a big exciting event is happening for me more so than day to day things. For example, my latest post is about starting school at MTSU.

I post on Twitter more often, but the posts are a lot less about my personal life. After having gone on my trip to India, I became obsessed with Bollywood movies and unfortunately most of my friends and family can’t relate. So I use Twitter as a way to connect with people I don’t know personally who share the same interest as me.

Friends and family that follow me on both Facebook and Twitter are probably the people I would say “know” me best, as they aren’t just seeing me from one angle. Adding someone on social media can give you a closer look into people like me who are quiet in person or to someone you haven’t met in person yet and may be sharing a room with in college, but it’s important to consider that what you see on a certain social media page may be only a small part of them and that judging someone by what they post on their social media is like judging a book by its cover.