One thing I can honestly say about social media that is a true positive quality is, it has created many jobs at a time when we needed it in America. Also, social media can be used as more of a marketing opportunity, you can use it as a tool to help you gain recognition from certain companies or even showcase your talent(s) if you're an artist. In a time, now, where it's more uncommon not to have a smart phone, computer or tablet, we've completely given in to the technology age. It's either adapt and change with the technology age or get left behind, from a social standpoint. As of January 2014 74 percent of Adults online use social networking/media sites, according to the Pew Research Center - 76 percent of women, 72 percent of men.
We've gone from the days of "Myspace" to "Twitter" and "Instagram". What does that mean though? Well, "Myspace" was a page that was created by the users to describe themselves and make it fit more to their personality and you could do things like post music, post your photos, of course, and it allowed you write/comment on your friends wall. Yes, a lot of those things we could do on "Myspace" we can do on "Facebook" still. However, Facebook didn't begin as a site that everyone could get on. Myspace started out as a social site for all people; Facebook was started for college kids, mainly, as a form to network and communicate with other college students and young professionals. Now, let's think look into the social media site that changed everything - Twitter! Twitter is just updating your status, constantly. 140 characters is all that you get, per status. Not only can you use words but you can also upload pictures, videos, a "gif" (a moving picture) and even what is known as a "meme" (a picture with a caption on it, usually humorous). Twitter, now, seems to be the more popular of all social media sites for the teen through young adult age-group - Facebook is still the most used site for people of all ages. But, after Twitter, it seemed society needed more but a social media site that required less but had as big of an impact. And so "Instagram" came about. Instagram is a social media site that you can use to post pictures, including memes, and you can write a caption to describe what you've posted or just comment about how you feel about your post. Also, you can comment on the persons photo.
Social media has been a way for people to meet, friends and lovers. But it also has hurt our ability to communicate in person. I know that I could personally have a conversation with someone via social media but barely speak when we see each other in person. It's just a common thing in society. I see it all the time, daily.
In a world where an "emoji" is more powerful than words sometimes, it's scary to think about our future.
Since being involved with and observing social media/networking sites, I've noticed a few things that could be hurting society more than helping. Social sites could be creating a larger separation between social classes. Ratios between followers and the amount of people that someone follows is a true identifier of that and a person being "verified" can a show a certain status that person has or their position in society, making them "more important" in social media. Another thing. It shows that content isn't as important as the person that delivers the content. It's nothing new to society and I don't know if this is something that people didn't already know, it's just in certain instances sad that people don't acknowledge this. We just live in a society that values more what a celebrity says more than a scientist or someone trying to do good for a community or help society (basically a tabloid society). Also, social media has seemed to cause society to overreact. It seems that a lot of people can see something, only via social media, and form their entire opinion of off that and not fully look into it, whether it's a video or see someone tweet something that they might not agree with fully.
Social media has taken sports to a "boom or bust" society. We [society] seem to judge every team/player off of what we see posted on social media, which is typically a small sample size.
In the world of sports and entertainment Twitter seems to keep us updated if we can't watch our favorite show or we can't watch our favorite team play, and that's very beneficial at times. We can still be active in life but keep up with sports. However, we no longer have to actually see anything in full, we can always watch the highlights or see the Twitter updates, right? Thinking of it like that, makes me wonder. Has television been preparing us for the social media age all along? Sports Center on ESPN is a show of mostly highlights and people giving their opinions on television on the day in sports. Fox Sports showing highlights throughout the day does the same thing. Now, everyone can give their feedback and opinions and it can make things a little more interesting and gives society a chance to be more involved. How can this hurt sports and society both? Well, when people are "trolling" athletes or these public figures, making ignorant comments, the public figure and athlete are expected to take the higher road and criticized or are seen as wrong if they don't. Where I come from people often said "don't dish it out if you can't take it" and I agree, fully.
In the social media age, everything is seen. With the ability to screen shot from our phones, cameras and video recorders on phones, it's tough for anyone to do anything these days without someone seeing it and eventually it will go viral and it will become public. For athletes, celebrities and anyone that is considered a public figure this can help or hurt them.
In a way, people are creating their lives through social media. Anything that you post people will take that as a reflection of the type of person that you are - words, pictures, etc. - and this can either be a good thing or a bad thing. In a sense it can build expectations that you can meet in real life or you could exceed a persons expectations.
How personal should we be making our social media sites, honestly? companies are now checking social media sites to see the applicants personality or see if they're doing anything publicly that could potentially hurt their company and it helps them decide if you would be a risk if working for their company.
For me, I know that checking social media has become a natural habit. When I wake up for me, it's more common that I check twitter and Instagram before I turn on the morning news or even brush my teeth, and I doubt I'm the only one. But with social media being as big as it is, what happens if it hits it's plateau in the world? or has it already done that? What will society do if social media didn't work anymore? Would we have to go back to a world of actually communicating in person and meet people the old fashion way?
There are many different social media sites - I just spoke about the most popular ones- and that means many different avenues that we will have to communicate with one another and more sites seem to be created as the years go on. And with every social media site that comes about, the less content/time you're allotted and it seems like the less content/time the more popular the site.
I've once heard that you should use social media as a tool for good if you want to get a decent job and less as a source for entertainment. Social media is either what you make it, or you are what it makes you look like to others.
No comments:
Post a Comment