How Social Media Has Changed Us: The Good and The Bad
It’s hard to believe that, only a decade ago, social media was little more than a budding trend. Sure, there were websites such as Friendster and MySpace that had a decent level of adoption, but the population as a whole had not come around to it yet.
Back in 2005, Facebook was still in it’s early stages of its spread across the world. Heck, I was signed up for it back then, but didn’t really see the point until a few years later. Twitter appeared around that time, but a lot of us saw it as a pointless lifecasting toy. LinkedIn was essentially a digital resume and, for some of us, a pseudo-Rolodex. And Google+ didn’t even come on the scene until 2011, followed later by Pinterest and other platforms.
Fast forward to 2014, and social media has become not only a key part of the modern lifestyle, but a useful marketing channel for businesses of all sizes. Yesterday, a friend commented (on Facebook of course) that her elementary age kids were stunned to know that phones were only used for conversations a few years ago. They were dumbfounded to hear that we didn’t even carry phones with us 15-20 years ago.
This tells me that everything has officially and permanently changed. There is a generation of kids coming up (mine included) who can’t even conceive of a world without smart phones and social networking. It has officially embedded itself in our culture.
As someone who spends nearly every waking hour connected in some way, including both personal and business, this really hits home for me. Let’s look at ways that social media improves our life experience, and also a few ways that it uncovers a few of the more unsightly parts of humanity. Surely you’ll agree on at least some if not all of them.
Social Media: The Good
Before I cover the “Bad,” let’s start by appreciating the things social media has done to add to our lives. Here are some of the better things I’ve observed.
Immediate Access to Information
Given all the consolidation of media companies in the United States, it is pretty easy to question whether the news we get from the major media is the full story or not. After all, it’s not a rare occasion to hear more about the latest Kardashian scandal or celebrity death than a political uprising in Turkey or elsewhere in the world.
One of the things that attracted me personally to Twitter was the immediate access to other sources of information. Back when the government raided Osama Bin Laden’s fortress in Pakistan, there was a nearby citizen live tweeting his observations of the whole situation through the night. I was out at an event that evening, and learned of it pretty soon after news broke domestically, directly from my contacts on Twitter.
Social media is also very helpful for expanding our sources of content as a whole. With so much being blogged and written, then curated and shared proactively, the volume of content has grown exponentially. Now, there is no shortage of viewpoints and sources from which we can draw our own conclusions about what is really happening in the world. It’s less important to have a news team interpret it on our behalf.
Pervasive Connectivity To Others
I remember the days of phones with old style dials. We didn’t even have answering machines back then. If you called someone and they didn’t answer the phone, you had to call back and try to catch them in real time.
When a call came in, there was no caller ID. You just picked it up and said, “Hello.” It was sometimes hard to catch up to people, so you had to hand write and send a letter to communicate when you were both leading busy lives.
Today, if you can’t catch someone on the phone, you can leave a voice mail or send a text. Or even better, tweet, Facebook message, or touch base in some other means. You can see what others are doing within seconds of them doing it, assuming they share it on a social network of some sort. It’s not hard to catch up with someone if they want you to find them. Kids have no idea how convenient this is in our daily lives (privacy concerns aside).
Globalized Voices
Similar to the phone situation I just spelled out, it was extremely difficult to access a globally reaching platform where one could share their opinions or findings back a mere 25 years ago. I recall in the early 1990s where it was a huge deal to send in a letter to the editor to a local newspaper, and have them actually decide to include the letter in the paper.
In the old days, mass media ruled. A company had to pony up thousands or even millions of dollars to be heard in most cases. Very large companies with deep pockets ruled the roost. Only
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