Socialnomics Reaction / Social Media

Social media offers platforms and tools that establish how we communicate with one another.

Social media is an umbrella term because it contains a collection of tools and platforms. It can be easily defined as websites and apps that allow users to share information, ideas, interests and other ways to express themselves. Its main use is for communication and interaction with other individuals. Social media is a way that we interact with others nearby and across the world by only clicking, swiping, posting, and typing. It touches almost every aspect of our day to day lives without us even realizing it. Social media and the internet almost aren’t even a choice anymore, it has become engrained in our lives and interactions.

I’ve recently began reading a book titled Socialnomics for my Web for Mass Communication class and it covers a wide variety of topics relating to social media and its usefulness. It is so relevant to us and the ways we use social media.

I valued that the book pointed out that humanity’s greatest need is to feel accepted. The book discusses our need to be individuals yet feel connected to and accepted by a larger social environment. However, we as humans aim to protect our privacy, but also want to be known and accepted by others. We are willing to risk some of our privacy in order to stay connected and accepted. The book also touches on the idea that most of us long to understand what other people are doing. We constantly want to be up to date on the lives of others and witness the things they’re doing. The key to social media is that were able to easily view and stay up to date on the lives of others by observing their posts through our device.

By witnessing what other people are doing, we use social media almost as a competition. We want to have the coolest feed with the best posts and the perfect caption. We all want to maintain an image or perfect lifestyle so that we can be accepted via social media. This makes me think of the discover or explore page on Instagram. I constantly find myself scrolling through the most popular posts trying to see what others are doing and thinking they have much cooler lives than I do.

I also found it interesting that social media has the ability to help people avoid information indigestion and that spending time on social media makes you more productive. I would think the opposite is true, but the book discusses how one can use social media as a time to be enjoyable and productive.

I’m intrigued by what I’ve read and I’m excited to continue to read and discover ideas regarding social media. The internet has influenced almost every area of our business and personal lives.

What ways do you use or rely on social media in your own lives?