For months, people have taken to Twitter to voice their political opinions. This chatter (ahem, chirping) had quickly picked up its momentum as we neared Tuesday’s presidential election. The intense tweets of strongly opinionated peers covered my feed, being updated at a record breaking frequency. Unfortunately, this led me to miss what Khloe Kardashian Odom was up to, and I didn’t get to spiritually better myself by reading my inspirational Buddha quotes, as I couldn’t find them buried beneath all of the election tweets. However, I do realize that choosing our country’s president is a much more pressing issue.

It’s pretty obvious by now that social media has become a huge part of our society and everyday life. Rather than letters or face-to-face speech, many people now rely solely on social media to voice their opinions. In this case, I’m referring specifically to Twitter. It is the perfect place for people to rant or express their views, getting straight to the point in a short 140 characters (and I thank the Lord above for this character limit, as my head would explode without it). Although social media has its downsides, such as forcing people to sit on the computer depriving themselves of vitamin C, it also has its positives.

As society has progressed to rely so heavily on social media, our standards have changed when it comes to the legitimacy of the form through which we communicate. For example, a few decades ago, people would have disregarded something stated on a social media network, seeing it as a place to simply talk about silly stuff. But now, Twitter is a powerful tool when it comes to discussing things such as the election. Thanks to its omnipresence in our daily lives, preaching our political beliefs on Twitter is almost as effective as protesting outside the White House. Almost.

Although some people’s tweets regarding the presidential election or candidates display a lot of ignorance and disrespect for others with different views, it’s an awesome tool that allows you to shed light on elements of President Barack Obama or Governor Mitt Romney’s campaigns and what they mean for Americans. Although I wasn’t old enough to vote this year, I, personally, took to Twitter to let my thoughts on the race be known. It’s cool to think that people are actually taking into account what you say on social media platforms.