Kick-off

Do you use social media? Write down the names of the social media that are most popular in your age group and what they are used for. Then watch Rhiannon and her younger sister McKenzie talk about social media in the USA.

Rhiannon:Uhm … I … have … used like all the social medias like Snapchat, Twitter, um, Instagram. Instagram is probably my favourite cause it deals with photos, which is what I like. Uh, Snapchat kind of just to … interact with her and do fun stuff on there, but Facebook I never really had up until like high school. I kind of only got one just because everyone kind of had one and then I wanted one, but then I don’t really use it. It’s more for like … our parents and stuff like that. I think they use it more than students do.
McKenzie:Old people have k-, kind of … taken over.
Rhiannon:Yeah.
McKenzie:The parents got onto it and the teens got off. So …
Rhiannon:Yeah. But everybody uses basically Twitter here and Shapchat and Instagram. Those are the most common ones, I think. And Vine, people watch a lot of those. I don’t think as many people make Vines like it – Vine is like to take v-, short clips of, videos that are normally funny. Anything really.
McKenzie:Short, funny videos or short, funny like songs or just songs. It’s – to share a little. It’s six-second videos and it’s pretty, it’s pretty interesting and pretty fun to do …
Rhiannon:I think most people like watch them for entertainment. I don’t think they really make them as much. I know one thing I use is YouTube, I don’t know. That’s m-, a really common one. I love watching YouTube videos. So I watch those on my own, own time.
McKenzie:With Twitter, like you … it’s … it’s a great way, not just for like social media, it’s like to find things that are going on around school. Cause if a … like if a track meet’s cancelled than everybody’s tweeting about it.
Rhiannon:Yeah.
McKenzie:It there’s a delay, everybody’s tweeting about it.
Rhiannon:Yeah.
McKenzie:Cause everybody wants to know if there’s a delay for school. That’s a really nice thing and then it’s just a great way to find out … gossip or what’s going on with your friends and stuff like that …
Rhiannon:And a lot of the like activities here and groups and clubs at school have their own like accounts and stuff on … not only Instagram, but like Twitter and the other ones. I don’t know about Snapchat, but …
McKenzie:It’s a great way to interact with like games. At games everybody can post a picture and you do a certain hashtag and then everybody can find it and favourite it or retweet it, so that’s really nice. And then it could end up on the school website or something like that, so …
Rhiannon:Also, like we were doing this … like where we sold Yuda Bands to like raise money for um – Yuda Bands are like these bracelets that I … I can’t remember where … I think it was, someone made ‘em in another country and we were selling them to raise money so they could go to school. Uhm … so if you bought a bracelet for 7 dollars then like that helped raise money for these two kids. And, I don’t remember where exactly, but they would be able to go to school if we raised enough. And so we did that for our National Honor Society so pe … that was another way with social media, people like could find out about buying them. They sold them during lunch, but … and then they remind you. So it’s kinda nice cause then you know like if they’re still selling them at lunch, cause on social media they’ll let you know, so …

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