what is social about social media?

Social is a word that has always been interconnected to the human nature. In fact, socializing is taking part of almost each and every activity that we undertake. For many people, the first thing that they do when they open their eyes in the morning is to go and check their phones for any new messages. Likewise, many others, if not those same people, find some difficulties letting go of their phones before going to sleep. However, even though if someone refuses to engage in any social activity, this is still described as a social behavior.

With that said, the need to socialize was the main reason behind the creation and empowerment of social media. People are developing new technologies to find better ways to satisfy that need that can be mainly divided into four categories:

Information and cognition:

Socializing doesn’t always require a human at the other end. It could be the interaction with an offline computer to gather information, to create and work on an idea, or to just have fun by simply playing a game. What matters is that you’re contributing to something been made by others; you’re expanding your social knowledge. There’s a famous saying that supports the above: we are what we know.

Community: Alike people like to bond, to share their similarities, and that became so much easier with lots of social media especially Facebook. It kind of creates a special feeling of belonging, that those people are connected.

Collaboration and co-operative work: Due to the creation of the internet, it is now possible to create a network that facilitates work in companies. Computers can be very beneficial at work by bringing people together; two persons who don’t know each other can work on the same project and are thousands of miles away from each others.

Communication: it’s a very explicit function of social media and the most important one. Now with the advanced technology, it can be faster, wider and covers almost each part of this planet. In addition to all of that, social media allows one to one, one to many and many to many communication. It is also a powerful way to make new friends.

It is very important to mention that a single social media cannot be designated to fulfill all of the above specialties. Let’s take for example Google; it is mainly for information and cognition. And Google was only possible because of the contribution of millions of people who most of them are making a living out of it.

So, here comes the big question, where does each one of us stand from all of this? What does the internet and especially social media mean to us? It’s a big question, because in a way or another it determines our look to the world, has it become based on Internet-centrism and technological determinism?

Once the Internet changed the world, now the world is changing the Internet (Hinton & Hjorth, 2013). It all started out in the late 60’s as a project by the United States military army and later on was knownas web 1.0. It is a flat and expensive software, his biggest flaw though, was that it was not at all Interactive and designed for professional use only. However, it can be described as a huge leap in technology that followed the shift from aristocracy to bourgeoisie.

Later on in the early 2000s, the world witnessed web2.0 and the start of a new technological era. The web became more interactive and easy to access. People started more and more to rely on technology, trying to use it in everything: to sell their stuffs (like e-bay), to express their opinions and ideas (like the Huffington post), to connect and communicate (like mySpace)… But they were faced by many problems such as the slow connection and that the internet was still expensive and not widespread.

Companies started to name their products with names starting by I or you, like ipad, iPod, imac, YouTube…. and people were standing in long lines waiting to buy their new toy that is supposed to make them cooler, happier and more connected to the world. The birth of Facebook was another huge leap for social media because it made it easier to connect, communicate and share everything around the globe. Zuckerman 2008, explained that the major difference between web 2.0 and web 1.0 is that web 2.0 can be easily used for everything, even to simply post a picture of a cute cat.

A great thing about web 2.0 is that it reduced the huge gap that used to be between the three society parts structure: private sphere, public sphere and the State. It became much harder to keep things in the dark since everybody now has easy access to enough sources of information. Social media has given massive power to all of its users, which some of them did not know how to use it properly.

A couple of years ago, a teenager tweeted that there is a possible bomb threat in an airport in Australia. The news spread very quickly and led to the canceling of 3 flights. At the end, it turned out that it was fake news and the reason why this boy did that was because he lost a bet to his friends at school. In another incident, a teenager in the USA committed suicide because she was strongly harassed on social media. The police investigated the situation and found out that all the harassments came from fake accounts(Charged With a Crime? Better Check Your Facebook Pictures). And like what they say, great power cannot come without great responsibility.

For the owners of social media, we users, are just numbers and they are the platform. We provide them with the content, with everything and they cannot survive without us. The problem is that they are using this sometimes against us and by different means. Social media can influence the society even though if their news were wrong.

From here rises another question, should we control social media? Also is there is some powerful people abusing power to filter news in a beneficial way for them?

The answer is quite simple, yes they are and not in a proper way. That is standing in front of honesty and integrity. We should not control social media but rather like what president Obama said, we should teach our kids enough critical thinking to be able to distinguish between what’s good and what’s bad, What to take and what to leave.

Hinton, S., & Hjorth, L. (2013). Understanding social media. Los Angeles, CA: Sage

Charged With a Crime? Better Check Your Facebook Pictures. (2008, December 16). Retrieved February 05, 2018, from https://laplaceramz.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/charged-with-a-crime-better-check-your-facebook-pictures/