We Record Our Own History

As the Coronavirus pandemic escalates, our lives are becoming more restricted. Constant news updates inform us about deaths, people in unfortunate situations, limited supplies and hate crimes.

So let’s talk about social media.

My twitter feed has been full of tik tok dances, end of the world memes, tic-tac-toe games with pets, political rants, calls to action, donation requests and endless other things.

Scrolling through Twitter has become a constant shift of emotions from enraged, terrified and literally laughing out loud. The boredom brought on by isolation has caused a whole new brand of humor that makes every day more enjoyable.

All of the posts of what people are doing to stay busy has made me think of history classes 50 years from now and how they are going to look back at this time period. In my history classes, first-hand accounts were letters, diaries and sometimes film and photographs. For the students studying the Coronavirus, it’s going to be our dumb-ass tweets.

To me that’s hilarious and I’m actually kind of jealous, but it has made me think about how our history is so much more accessible than our parent’s history. They have photo albums, diaries they may have kept and trinkets from throughout their lives. 

We have direct access to our own thoughts. Even Facebook has a feature that allows us to look back at past (cringeworthy) posts. Through social media, we and future generations can see our immediate reactions to historical events: like playing ping pong with neighbors through the apartment windows. 

We will know what our concerns were, our fears and our priorities. We have become our own autobiographers, so vent your feelings on twitter! Post posed pictures on Instagram. Do it now so you can look back and remember your life, your style, your haircut. Remember what you looked like on a daily basis and what you’re thoughts were during a world-wide crisis, who knows? Maybe your tweet will be in a textbook one day.

• Coronavirus
• pandemic
• social media