What is Social Media

Introduction

Social media has gained massive popularity over the years. Starting from sites like MySpace, Hi5, and Bebo in the early 2000s to the platforms of today, social media has provided a platform for an unprecedented level of communication, social interaction, and connection. Fueled by principles of social networking, user engagement, and content sharing, the phenomenon of social media is omnipresent in modern society. Though these platforms were originally conceived to aid the connectivity of undergraduate students, they have evolved into applications connecting people and communities across global regions.

For instance, Facebook has grown from an application that served only Harvard undergraduate students into a site with more than 1.3 billion users who are actively engaging in the network. The ease with which platforms like these can be accessed has encouraged a shift from traditional communication and cultural exchange. Furthermore, mobile technology has been a driving force behind the exponential growth of social media outlets in recent years. Users can now interact in real time with a multitude of contacts across a number of networks in expanded geographical locations. This, of course, is a sharp departure from how users connected prior to mobile evolution.

At the time of revision, the number of social media users worldwide surpassed 3 billion. This represents nearly 40% of the global population. This indicates that well over 50% of the world's internet usage or 20% of the entire global population have an active social media profile. This is a phenomenal evolution of connectivity on an international scale.

Key Features and Platforms

Over the past two decades, numerous social media platforms have emerged. Broadly speaking, these can be categorized by their atomic function. The most prevalent are networking websites, enabling users to not only connect with others that they know in real life, but also keep up to date with their respective activities. Some other social media platforms are primarily used for content sharing or microblogging. This categorization is somewhat simplistic, since all social media platforms are multifunctional, yet it highlights their differing focal points and allows them to be broadly distinguished. In this section, we analyze the key features and dynamics of social media from a bird's-eye view. We are particularly interested in how users' actions and the construction of various platforms encourage interactions and influence the spread of information. We include the features of algorithms and content construction on a descriptive level in order to illustrate some of the unique mechanics of different platforms, but we must emphasize that our approach isn't to study the nitty-gritty of algorithms, nor these types of platform practices.

Across various platforms, the features influencing interaction and the spread of information are often common. One of those commonalities—and indeed, among the most important driving forces of content spread in social media—is that human users are responsible for generating content. Services especially attract a large number of people who produce content through their actions, such as text posts, pictures, or videos. When using such services, channel members often show a preference for interacting with other nonprofessional users, as opposed to company posts. For this reason, interaction can be seen to rise to enormous levels in social media. The incumbent online networks are of global scale with hundreds of millions to billions of members, including international invitees for radicalization purposes. The pervasive use has prompted critics to claim that the issue of extremism is primarily a social media problem rather than a societal one.

Effects of Social Media

Positive effects of social media include an increased ability to connect with others and opportunities to access a wealth of information. Whether through commenting on or sharing news stories that are relevant to their lives or participating in community forums, these new social structures have become central to contemporary society, helping decrease tendencies toward social alienation and the reduction of public spaces for both public and anonymous opinions and engagement. However, citizen-led inclusion through social media only goes so far; when that sentiment does not coalesce into tangible forms of collective action, it has little importance to governments. Efforts toward collective or hegemonic action have easier pathways to success for minority groups that are small in geography but large in impact. Public opinion itself has significantly important effects on the conversations that take place in the public sphere. Media often will not discuss the potentially dangerous aspects of the movement within its articles. This power to shape collective images highlights the importance of understanding the impact that social media has on the public.

Social media has also been a catalyst for connecting diaspora populations and organizations. It can spread and amplify particular types of diaspora-themed content that would not be easily accessible offline. In this way, social media may facilitate intergroup communication between diaspora or diaspora and other groups, leading to strong, politically motivated linkages. These benefits, however vocal, increase only unidirectional communication between the state and the community. Negative outcomes are associated with social media as well. Research proves that social media use has a direct effect on unhappiness. Social media use requires a heavy amount of work to protect self-identities as users need to ensure they portray their online personas in ways that match their real life. In some cases, failure to match the desired online self can result in less happiness. These repeated interactions of online and offline behaviors can impact the communication between individuals and society and may facilitate the development of depressive episodes and a lack of mental health coping styles. The constant interplay between social media and the lack of beneficial interactions to counteract the onset of negative mental health manifests as depressive symptomology. However, the implications of social media use on mental health are qualitative, with no one-size-fits-all explanation for the insomnia, anxiety, depression, or social isolation that social media produces. Overall, social media use may provide an outlet to foster new romantic relationships but may come at the cost of decreased offline social interaction. The majority of social media users have experienced at least one positive benefit, while side effects may vary to a larger degree.

Future Trends

Many concerns may be raised with regard to social media services, such as issues related to user privacy, data governance, and content moderation. The rapid collection of personal data and its exploitation has raised concerns about privacy, data security, and consumer rights. Social media companies have faced criticism for algorithmic prioritization of content with high engagement at the expense of accuracy. Furthermore, these platforms have allowed not only for the substantial amplification and spread of false information but also for dangerous content such as hate speech and terrorist propaganda. In response, societal debates are ongoing about the desirability and effectiveness of government intervention via increased regulation and stronger content moderation. There are also upcoming, long-term trends in the development of social media services that may have greater than expected relevance for libraries. These include the rise of decentralized, blockchain-based social media platforms that are designed to give users more control over their data and to counteract the power of large social media companies. Besides these new forms of distribution and interaction, the nature of the digital content on these platforms will also continue to evolve. Many futurists expect a widespread transition into three-dimensional and virtual or augmented reality mediated communication. However, it should also not be ruled out that, in light of the ongoing ethical considerations and knowledge about the negative effects of too much algorithmic curation, many users may start to lose interest in the development of their social media experience as they search for ways to control and limit the digital information surrounding them.

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