With the world we live in now the question asked in the title of this blog should be as obvious as the nose on your face or is it. Most people thing they are tech savvy and understand all the new-fangled ways to communicate with their friends and family. That they are using this very hip phrase "Social Media" and are part of the "scene". Most people think of social media as your Facebook's, YouTube's and Twitter's of this world, and they would be right, but most people don't know why they are classified as such. A definition of Social Media is provided by Merriam Webster and it states that Social Media are "forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and micro blogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)", (m-w.com, 2014). This definition encapsulates a lot of things and points out that surfing the web, looking at websites, or googling people is not using social media as they don't allow the user on the main to do the above. Also non electronic media such as newspapers, magazines are not social media even though they are under the banner of media. These types of outlets allow people to comment on their websites about articles but it doesn't create an online community like the definition above states.
[Image: Yahoo.com]
Social Media gives people the opportunity to interact 24/7 in all forms from messages to pictures and videos. People can be instantly updated as to what you are doing, there is instant feedback on what you say and do and people can interact like they are in the same room even though they be hundreds or even thousands of miles away from each other . This can be a bad thing as well. As the saying says " too much of a good thing, can be bad for you". There is only so much information a person can take and I feel myself when I am using Facebook that I become jaded after a while by my friends' updates even though I love them dearly.
But what does using all of these social media sights tell us about ourselves. Are we really that needy that we need to be in constant touch with people, that "likes" or "dislikes" on Facebook satisfy some yearning for instant gratification, that tweeting about some restaurant or T.V. program you have watched is needed to satisfy an urge "to shout it from the nearest rooftop", or telling the world about your nasal hair, or whatever we are a doing at the time. Do we really not have anything better to be doing with our time! It does raise the question of what we use to do with our time before this great technological revolution happened! Were we needing to be in instant touch with each other and we didn't know it, were we poorer emotionally because of it? There is no likes or dislikes going on in respect of what we were up to. I think we probably cherished our relationships more because of the lack of instant contact with people. That we savored our interactions with our friends when we met them as they may only have been of a defined period. That we talked more to each other. With all this tweeting and Facebook postings and Instagram etc. we don't actually talk a lot to each other. It is all written word or bits or words!
Anyway, I will stop now as I have said enough and say that I do like social media even if I expressed my doubts about I will continue to use it in the future.
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