I choose to research how to improve my overall nutrition which will help my body, brain, and my mood. For this topic I turned to Reddit and specifically delved into the thread r/nutrition. Here I found an abundance of information all concerning nutrition in different aspects of one’s life. As a science major, the human body has always interested me and recently I have been looking into different ‘superfoods’ and natural supplements to help my body work at it’s full capacity. From healthy work snack options, to learning what a good fat-carb-protein ratio is for your goals can be found here from a variety of people with different educational backgrounds.
I wanted to further look into some healthy meals on another platform that I could create myself. I found that the more I looked into different creators and content on instagram, more related content came up and I was swimming in healthy recipes! This reminded me of the book Atomic Habits, where the author says that the 2nd law is to “make it attractive”. Seeing all these healthy recipes online that looked aesthetically pleasing motivated me to try and make them for myself. I noticed how easily we can use social media as a motivator if we surround ourselves with the right things on it.
Side note: Atomic Habits is an excellent book I have linked here if you want to check it out!
Building My PLN
I plan to use a variety of social media’s to build my PLN to make it as diverse as possible. I find platforms like tiktok and instagram throw a lot of information at you in very short and visually appealing format, but the information itself tends to be very surface level.
Instagram: I enjoy instagram in a personal setting, for me it is not the best tool for my PLN but I think it would be good to give me some ideas about my PLN. Also I believe it can lead me to creators on different platforms as most have youtube channels or podcasts as well that I can use as a tool.
Youtube: With youtube, creators can make in-depth content that can be as long or short as they please. As a visual and auditory learner, I find this platform best to learn different skills and I resort to it often.
Reddit: Reddit allows people to join groups and ask or answer questions people post. Although I do take it with a grain of salt (because people on the internet don’t always speak the truth), I find it helpful for directing me to a group of people with a common interest and idea’s on how to help or improve.
Twitter/Facebook: I know these two platforms are not one and the same and I personally don’t have that much experience in either area, but I believe that they are great for real-time updates. Twitter uses hashtags to group discussions whereas Facebook allows you to join groups with a collective interest.
All the platforms above play to different strengths and have multiple things they can offer that another platform can’t. I believe using multiple social media platforms will help me to create a diverse PLN.
Setting Goals and Engaging in Communities
Determining the right media to engage with communities can depend on your goal and intention. My goal, professionally as a scientist, is to build my PLN around those in the science community and learn more about what different pathway’s I can take with my degree. Being able to receive support and reach out to those already in the field, the information I gather will help me further my career while I focus in on what interests me the most. As for engaging in the community, I believe this piece will be dynamic. Initially I will start with questions and passive engagement until I feel comfortable enough to share my own ideas and innovations. LinkedIn comes to the top of my list for working on my professional goals as it is a very career oriented platform. Whereas my personal goals involve things like staying healthy (exercise and nutrition) which I don’t think LinkedIn would provide a community I would benefit from. For my personal goals I think initially turning to instagram to get that quick surface level information, would allow me to then find creators I like and learn more with them on their youtube or blog.
As mentioned in the article Leveraging Social Media to Build a PLN, one must also consider the format they are interacting with online. Again, I think this will differ between my personal and professional PLN. I am unsure which media will work best right now, but I think I will enjoy text as my mode of interaction for professional platforms and audio or visual for my personal goals.
Here is a video I found that lays out a simple process of creating a PLN that can be applicable in both professional and personal goal-orientated communities.
Protecting Information and Ensuring Ethical Behaviour
Online safety is a priority for me. With the growing risk of being hacked or tricked into pressing a fraudulent link, I have become more cautious of where I put my personal information in. I do believe on a professional platform that having your full name (first and last name) is customary, however, extra information that is ‘optional’ I take into consideration if I want to fill it in. I don’t think LinkedIn or Twitter needs to know my ethnicity, religion, birthday, etc so I give platforms the bare bones of what they need to know without giving up too privacy.
The internet is not the safest place and can be full of imposters. When creating my PLN I intend to thoroughly look into the people I connect with closely to ensure they are who they say they are and never give up private information that I deem unnecessary.
Privacy Concerns and Online Participation
Privacy concerns are not a huge concern of mine in the context of joining a new platform or social media as I am very selective as to what I share and can control that. I ensure to familiarize myself with the privacy settings and toggle/input what I feel comfortable with. For example, for all of my apps that ask to see my location I always say “only while using app” if the app requires my location (i.e uber, maps, etc). I don’t like the idea that apps can collect my location data in the background and I am aware they can do this so I disallow those settings. Same goes for other online communities, I will share what I feel comfortable with situationally per platform.
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