Since the day my generation was born social media has impacted all of us either in a positive or negative way. To us it’s our way of life, we have become so familiar to social media its second nature. Social media has been a platform where people post their lives and feelings to the point where they post everything about themselves. The internet has impacted the way we use social media to this day.”If you’re trying to seek a job but post everything you do on the weekends, most employers can look these things up and you’re likely to not get the job. Your first impression is everything in life that affects you getting hired or not hired,”(Miller). What you do on social media is equivalent to how people will perceive you. Social media was originally started to meet new people, build new friendships and relationships. One down fall of social media is that if you want to deactivate your account it doesn’t officially go away, it can always be viewed or searched by many people.” When people start to be comfortable with being an open book on social media, the “reasonable standard” of the privacy is being lowered,”(Miller). Another downfall of social media is that younger teens are allowed access to these apps just by lying about their age when creating an account. One ,they are not old enough by the app rules and two ,they will experience and see things they shouldn’t.

By the 1980s, many home computers were becoming more common and social media was becoming used everyday.”Internet chat rooms were first being used in 1988 and continued to be popular well into the 1990’s,”(Hendricks).The invention of the smartphone boosted social media from the desktop and laptop computer. Social media dates back as far as 1840s. Andrew Weinreich founded Six Degrees social media site in 1997,(Jones).This allowed users to upload a profile and make friends with other users. In 1999 the first blogging sites became popular. “Social media was first created for a site centered on professional networking allowing people to unite with businesses and school contacts as well as companies,”(Maryville). Social media has helped many businesses develop quickly and get ahead of itself, also it has helped people find an easier and better way to connect and communicate with one another. However on the other hand “social media has provided many people with problems such as stress, mental health issues, emotional insecurities and waste of time,”(Pantic). These days social media impacts our lives everyday, whether it be work, school, or personal lives. “Moveon.org was the first activist social media site in 1998. It began as an email group passing around petitions opposing the impeachment of Bill Clinton. After it went on opposing US military actions. Just before the year of 2000 blogging sites began to appear,”(McFadden). Blogging sites are a very popular social media spot today.

The evolution of social media has made our human impulses to want to communicate with other people and with the advances in our digital technology. It is the history of humans wanting to establish a close connection with people. The first social media commercial advertisement site was Lunastorm, this began in the 2000s. At times social media is a challenging industry to keep their users engaged. “That is what happened to Friendster in 2002, it was used as a messaging site but also a dating site. Friendster eventually closed in 2015 due to the lack of users. In 2003 Myspace was being launched. By 2006, it was the most visited website on the planet!,”(Samur).The reason it was popular was users were able to share new music directly on their profile pages. The invention of the smartphone boosted social media from computers. The first apple iPhone made by Steve Jobs in 2007, helped focus people to the online community that was building on mobile devices.” In 2019 the Pew Research Center reported that the social media use in the United States showed that 72% of American adults use some form of social media. But in 2005, a year after Facebook went viral that number was at 5%,”(Perrin).This meant the rest of the internet didn’t even know what it was. There was two other major sites in social media that collapsed after a burst of success.

The unstable growth of social media has provided millions of people opportunities to post and create new content on a larger platform. A few years ago, no one thought social media would be as big as it is now. There is a large portion of these social networks that is opinionated and fake news that we have to take into account everyday. These issues are constantly posted and discussed on social sites for everyone to see. This modern technology has become our life so fast. It has made distance between the people feel so close. I think people will always be in contact and share their feelings with one another. This is what has made our world full of new and exciting things.”No matter the age, we are always aware of breaking news that is happening. Even when different parts of the world are advancing or not we will still be connected through social media. So what happens next in social media? The media will be shaped by the new businesses as well as by advances in old stories about technology. How will big social media platforms such as Facebook, instagram, TikTok, and others be popular?,” (Maryville), to answer these common questions, I think it will determine how our society handles these next stage of social media’s evolution. I believe that there are people in our world who have educated themselves in these topics. They will continue to study these problems and will help us grow our social media and as a society. Our world is is quickly changing in every aspect of it.

Citations:

Samur, Alexandra. “The History of Social Media: 29+ Key Moments.” Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard, 27 Nov. 2018, blog.hootsuite.com/history-social-media/.

University, Maryville. “The Evolution of Social Media: How Did It Begin and Where Could It Go Next?” Maryville Online, 2 June 2020, online.maryville.edu/blog/evolution-social-media/.

Miller, Kristine F. Introduction to Design Equity. University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing, 2018.

Hendricks, Drew. “The Complete History of Social Media: Then And Now.” Small Business Trends, 25 Nov. 2019, smallbiztrends.com/2013/05/the-complete-history-of-social-media-infographic.html.

Jones, Matthew. “The Complete History of Social Media: A Timeline of the Invention of Online Networking.” History Cooperative, 3 Nov. 2020, historycooperative.org/the-history-of-social-media/.

Pantic, Igor. “Online Social Networking and Mental Health.” Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., Oct. 2014, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183915/.

McFadden, Christopher. “A Chronological History of Social Media.” Interesting Engineering, Interesting Engineering, 2 July 2020, interestingengineering.com/a-chronological-history-of-social-media.

Perrin, Andrew, and Monica Anderson. “Share of U.S. Adults Using Social Media, Including Facebook, Is Mostly Unchanged since 2018.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 31 July 2020, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-s-adults-using-social-media-including-facebook-is-mostly-unchanged-since-2018/.