Social media: could we live without it?

By Jordan Weber

Social media has “taken over the world”, so to speak, with its applications ready and able for anything from phones, to iPods, to able to work on anything with internet access. After talking to some people about their social media habits, I realized more and more just how much people depend on their social media outlets and how, if those outlets were taken away, they may not know how to function correctly.

 

Myspace started the real addiction to social media and its just gone uphill from there. Myspace was one of the first “teen based” social sites where you could find friends, message and comment back and forth with them, as well as follow your favorite bands and meet new people. Many teenagers and young adults learned early on with Myspace that you can easily multitask while connect with your friends online.

Out of the 10 people interviewed, 9 said their social media experience begun with Myspace, which led them into the now, ever so popular, Facebook world. Facebook is constantly used by all 10 people interviewed, as well as is used hours throughout the day.

With all the technology in society today, there are thousands of ways to connect to social media with just the touch of a button. Although there are many different ways to connect to social media, the interviewees tend to lean toward using their home computers and laptops, rather than the select few who used their Blackberrys or iPhones or another type of smart phone.

In my interviews I came to find out on average the people I talked to used some kind of social network between two to four hours a day. The most popular forms of social networking used was Facebook, Twitter, and World of Warcraft. Myspace use to be popular but with Facebook and Twitter, Myspace has pretty much died in the social networking world.

Another form of connection that seems to be popular throughout my interviewees was Skype. Skype is kind of a way of social media, since it connects one person to another with the use of chatting and webcam-ing. Skype is very helpful especially to those who are in the Military or live in a different state than their families and friends because they are able to connect and share information through this free downloadable program.

All I wonder is what would people do without social networks? How would we connect with people in the same amount we do today? How much different would the world be?

From what I have seen during this research, the answer to that truly depends on the person. However, for most people, they would say they would be unable to function correctly without the use of social media in their every day lives.