Social Media's Evolution

In the past decade, the evolution of social media has been very rapid. In 1999, I only had an AIM account and I used it to talk to my friends and nothing else. That was essentially social media’s purpose in 1999, but it has become so much more since then. Nowadays, the various social media platforms can be utilized for many reasons. Besides contact with friends, the main reason I use any of them is for business purposes, specifically Facebook. I am a graphic designer as well as a rapper and producer, so Facebook has given me the opportunity to connect directly with promoters to book shows and clients for graphics. If I wasn’t on Facebook then I would have never made connections that led me to opening for multiple national acts, too. I encourage anyone who has business aspirations to utilize Facebook to expand their brand.

Although I am a strong advocate for social media for business purposes, one of the reasons I don’t like social media is because I feel like it intrudes on our daily lives. One example is how social media has changed social gatherings. At any given concert, a large amount of the people in the audience are recording the event instead of living in the moment. At a party, bored people are scrolling Facebook while the others are posting drunken antics to Snapchat.

That being said, I feel that there is most definitely a responsibility for using social media. Personally, I rarely post anything that would be considered personal. For example, there are no pictures of my pets or family on any of my pages. I believe that the user has the right to express themselves but, especially when the user is in their late 20’s and up, certain content [Ex: Party pictures, etc.] should not be posted and there should be a professional element to their profile. As college students and job seekers, we also have to be careful because we represent our college and our brand as potential employees.

I feel that social media has made it too easy for certain people to voice their opinion. This leads to them to abusing their privileges and getting into trouble. One tweet can ruin a celebrity’s reputation or at least alter the public’s perception of them. There have been countless examples, perhaps the most known one is the Anthony Weiner scandal in 2011. Weiner accidentally posted graphic pictures of himself online, thus tarnishing his reputation and forever altering his political career.

In the future, sadly, I foresee social media becoming an integral part of human interaction. Recently, Facebook announced that they have created a “virtual hangout” app using the Oculus Virtual Reality system, thus allowing people all over the world to “hang out” together in a virtual space, eliminating the need for physical travel. I [kind of] understand the need for this, but it is only a matter of time before we abandon physical interaction totally and rely on computers to accomplish every task.

Screenshot from "Black Mirror (2016)" Episode: "15 Million Merits"

Avatars replace real audience members on a TV show.