Social media: Creating a new meaning of “sharing”?
If a person would compare how their parents used to understand certain issues, perceive certain things and live their lives they will come to notice almost nothing is similar to our lives today. Let us take a simple example, such as the word “sharing” this is only one word, if we compare its meaning in the past to its meaning today we will realize that even this has a completely different implication. “Sharing” used to refer to “Jointly using a resource or space”, “Communicating”, “Having things in common”. The social function of sharing used to be sharing new ideas or work to create something productive in the future, to share is to be a good friend which shows collaboration and good sportsmanship. It was used for creating social relationships that are supported by collaboration between two or more people in economic and social aspects of life. Today people understand the term sharing differently and use it in a diverse way, let’s just say sharing got an updated version. As we know the 21st century is the era of the internet and social media. According to Hinton&Hjorth, (n.d) “once the internet changed the world, now the world is changing the internet” (p.7). Today if people want to “share” an idea they support they can do it with a click of a button on Facebook. If people want to communicate they can do it through comments on Instagram by telling their friend how good they look in this picture and show their love with an emoji. With Web 2.0, with computers around the world connected, people can spread news, ideas, creations and achievements with a click of a button. But the question is: are these new ways of communicating and sharing for the better of society or are they for the worst?
The majority of people nowadays have social media such as Facebook, Instagram and twitter.Social media helps people to exchange information whether by sharing your friends post or commenting on their photos or even writing a status on your own Facebook page. People can share things related to various topics such as technology, fashion, books, advertisements and much more. These started out as a way of sharing thoughts and photos, now people check employers Facebook page before deciding whether they should give them the job or not, by checking out his/her achievements (where did they work, where did they travel to before, are they married, if they have a family). Social media has become an economic, social and political landscape. Just by seeing the stuff people share and like, others would know which political party you are with, which bank you collaborate with, if you watch a certain series or not. But the problem here is the information we share really has no appreciation anymore. For instance, I personally see many videos on Facebook about new creations such as the built in heat sweatshirt shown in the picture below. I play the video for 5 seconds to see what it is about, I like it and scroll down to other news. The person who created this shirt shared a 10 minute video about how he made it and its benefits, yet not everyone takes the time to appreciate all his hard work. The “like” is a sign of support, but really is “likes” what that person wanted to achieve? Was his goal to get one thousand likes?
On the other hand, if you think about it this person decided to post this creation on social media for advertising purposes, so more people can see it, share it and get the word out. People nowadays, take advantage of how easy news is shared on the internet for their personal benefits. Maybe his work was not that appreciated buy some people, but others may contact this person to buy the sweatshirt. Moreover, not only the creator will profit from these shares and likes, the social media platform will profit because they now know these type of creations interest you and more ads will pop up on your page so you could see them. According to Kennedy (n.d) “The social media platform prefers you to share with as many others as possible. Greater connections mean wider sharing with further opportunities to generate data. Data is gold. The data generated by sharing is part of what The World Economic Forum call an emerging ‘asset class” (p.131). This data that each person has is profit to social media owners. The more you share, the more they are satisfied; they are the ones who profit. Your friends and family might see your shared post and they will also like it and share it, than it keeps going on and on to new people. Honestly, when I think about it, I don’t know why I share certain things. Some things I feel I can relate with, such as quotes and memes, some things interest me like news about my favorite series or Zara’s new collection is out and sometimes I just share because my friends text me and ask me to share their post so they can get more likes.
Even when it comes to some social media pages like ones made from universities the sharing buttons we have today give a great help to students. For instance, at my university we have a page on Facebook and Instagram called “LAU courses and teachers” where students share used books for sale and ask advise about which is the professor to take a certain course with. In this way if i personally share one of these posts, many of my friends would see it and it could help them a lot. Thus, making our lives easier.
Now when it comes to the “unfollowing” “un-liking” methods, I think that just went too far. Some girls especially after a breakup say “I showed him I unfollowed him on Facebook” thus showing she no longer cares to see any of his posts and any new information about him. Now I think that is a bit too much, using a button for “revenge”. I think we should take advantage of the information we can access and share in a smart way. For instance, if you follow a page that supports a certain NGO than the page starts promoting un-ethical stuff or things you are not with, you can unfollow because this way each unfollow will make them use viewers thus credibility and in this way you will actually make a change with the social button, by probably making them stop posting this kind on bad content.
To conclude, we can see that sharing today isn’t about good sportsmanship and collaboration with your peers only. It is today a profit for economy, a support system for politics and social affairs and a way to show off the amount of likes and shares you have to annoy your other contacts. If you think about it, we all decide what we want to share and what we don’t so if social networks want to profit from this data we are the ones helping them to do so. With all social media buttons at our disposal and all for free, why wouldn’t we share with our friends and family? In the past they used to share things like research papers, discoveries, creations, ideas also to profit, the difference is now it’s easier and can get to more people. So we can say that social media buttons just increased and helped the ways people share information, maybe yes sometimes things go too far people might just share things for no reason at all, just for the sake of sharing, but as for technology wise and living in the 21st century these buttons do make our lives easier and introduce us to more information, while helping us share our own.
References
Hinton, S & Hjorth, L. (n.d). Understanding social media. p.7
Kennedy, J. (n.d). Rhetoric of sharing: Data, imagination and desire.p.131
