The Evolution of Social Media…According to Me
It all started with email. The first form of communication where you could send your friends and family the shortest messages without paying a single cent. Uncomplicated, easy, but OH GOD the chain emails!! They always gave me the biggest heart attacks. “Send them quick before you receive bad luck for the next 10 years” I would think. What a time….
Then came the most exciting thing to come home to after elementary school: MSN. This was the coolest chatroom to be on to talk to all the classmates you just saw at school. There was so many great features; the unlimited emojis to choose from, the cool statuses we’d change every hour, the “appear offline” button to seem mysterious to your crush, and the most annoying features in the world…the nudge and the knock. This was used to bug your friends if they didn’t answer you or just for anyone who just wanted to get your attention in the most ANNOYING way.
MSN was the place to be and the first place that we all experienced FOMO (fear of missing out). This feeling, despite us not realizing it, appeared every time we had dance class or a doctor’s appointment after school that hindered us from being online and talking about the latest school gossip with our friends. We all just wanted to know what everyone was talking about and be included in the conversation, however insignificant it was. Unfortunately, MSN slowly declined in interest, as something better emerged on the Web…
Probably one of the most game-changing platform that totally flipped my world upside down, Facebook, was launched on the Internet in February of 2004. Created by THE Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook was created as a way to share our lives with our fellow friends and family.
This online platform was the first time we were introduced to social currency, highlight reels and unfortunately, online harassment. Because of the extensive sharing of our information, many people had the urge to be someone they weren’t just to get the approve of others. These likes, comments, and shares all had an effect on everyone’s self-esteem, and I mean EVERYONE. This, in turn, made us have a desire to post only our best moments to gain extra attention for our successes (no matter how big or small). But like everything in life, not everyone will applaud you, as some can just put you down. Why you ask? “Well, probably because they are just bored, or jealous”, my mom would tell me. But after being told millions of times, it never really stuck, as I still kept trying to please all my friends on Facebook and keep up this “fake news” that my life was so exciting.
It just got worse when the first iPhone was released and more platforms similar to Facebook came out. Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter — they are all platforms for us to showcase our best or worst moments and for others to judge and comment on those moments. Why do we care so much about what others think of us? Well, that answer lies in the combination of all the stressors of social media: FOMO, social currency, highlight reel, and online harassment (Parnell, 2018). We care because we don’t want to feel left out, we want the likes on our best moments — all in order to avoid online harassment from others. But are all these things really causing online harassment? Because in my opinion, online harassment will happen either way, as long as they have a platform to attack people on. It doesn’t matter what statuses we make, or how many likes or friends we have on our profiles, we will always get judged on something.
Therefore, I believe we shouldn’t let our fear of online harassment affect how we use social media or how we share our lives to the public. Because in the end, our social media accounts are ours and we should have control on how we want to share our lives, not what others expect from us. So I’m writing this article to say — from the start, we have always been pressured to do things that the society wants us to do, that now it’s time for us to step back and create our own paths in the complex world we call social media.
