You read about it every day. Social media and technology are destroying communication and creating desensitized and unfocused kids. In reality, social media hasn’t destroyed communication it’s just changed it. In Clay Shirky’s TED Talk about social media making history he focuses on three major changes social media has made and even though he spoke back in 2009, these three major changes are still evolving today.
“We’re starting to see a media landscape in which innovation is happening everywhere and moving from one spot to another. That is a huge transformation.” (Shirky).
He said this 11 years ago and the biggest difference today is that we’re no longer “starting” to see innovation in the media landscape, it’s all we see. Content creators, influencers and brand representatives are a constant on every social media platform feed.
The first major change Shirky talked about was how the internet and social media have allowed for large groups to connect and talk to other large groups.
“The Internet is the first medium in history that has native support for groups and conversation at the same time. Whereas the phone gave us the one-to-one pattern, and television, radio, magazines, books, gave us the one-to-many pattern, the Internet gives us the many-to-many pattern. For the first time, media is natively good at supporting these kinds of conversations,” (Shirky)
Today’s social media landscape is completely monopolized by group to group contact. Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and now even Tik Tok allow for you to not only share your opinions with the world, but you can also create exclusive group chats and message boards to share things between specific people. In 2020 everyone can have a voice, and everyone can share it everywhere.
This group communication is a fantastic way of sharing for the most part, but at times surrounding yourself with like-minded people who have the same view and opinion on things as you can also warp your perspective and prevent you from seeing the whole picture. Facebook and Pew have both conducted research and found that social media can change the way people think.
“Pew found that 20 percent of survey respondents say social media has altered their position on a political issue and 17 percent say it has changed their view of a specific candidate” while “Facebook released its own study last year that showed its users have five friends with political views similar to their own for every one friend with opposing views.” (Overly)
It’s insane to think that just a couple of apps can change the things we like and the people we idolize so easily.
“The second big change is that, as all media gets digitized, the Internet also becomes the mode of carriage for all other media, meaning that phone calls migrate to the Internet, magazines migrate to the Internet, movies migrate to the Internet. And that means that every medium is right next door to every other medium.” (Shirky)
Back in 2009 Shirky was describing the shift in news and info from paper to digital and the abundance of apps that were being created to easily share this information. Now in 2020, everyone has a phone that gives constant updates and can access any kind of media, like magazines, news, movies, television and more at any time.
“The third big change is that members of the former audience, as Dan Gilmore calls them, can now also be producers and not consumers. Every time a new consumer joins this media landscape a new producer joins as well, because the same equipment — phones, computers — let you consume and produce.” (Shirky)
Shirky’s final point is that there are no longer only producers and professionals making content – it’s everyone. In 2009, YouTube was only 4 years old and creators were just starting to be a thing, but now content is popping up everywhere. The cameras on phones have just as an amazing quality, if not better than expensive film cameras. Anyone can have access to editing software and specifically right now, in a time where almost everyone has been stuck inside for so long people need an easy and accessible outlet to create and express themselves and for most people – it’s social media.
“In a world where media is global, social, ubiquitous and cheap, in a world of media where the former audience are now increasingly full participants, in that world, media is less and less often about crafting a single message to be consumed by individuals. It is more and more often a way of creating an environment for convening and supporting groups.” (Shirky)
Another big part of social media’s mass attraction is that it has actually changed the way humans behave. In the video “The Science Behind Social Media Addiction”, they talk about how at this point most of society is so consumed by social media that at times it could be acting like a drug for us. The immediate pleasure we get from our followers liking or commenting on our posts releases enough dopamine that people can actually become addicted to that feeling and never want to leave.
So, it’s easy to see Shirky’s point that social media has made history. It’s physically changed the way humans behave, it’s wormed its way into almost every facet of society and in many industries like public relations and entertainment it’s one of the most crucial aspects.
It’s clear to anyone that many things have changed since Shiky’s TED Talk in 2009, but one thing remains the same and Shirky sums it up perfectly in his final statement. “The question we all face now is, “How can we make best use of this media? Even though it means changing the way we’ve always done it.”(Shirky)
We’re still asking ourselves this same thing 11 years later. How can we make a universal ability to share and connect beneficial and not harmful? And today with the corona virus we’ve seen it pushed to its limits with trying to connect people and share things with separated friends and family. And in this pandemic, there have been many things that made quarantine and life a little happier in these dark times, but so much of social media’s limits are still unknown. That’s why we have twitter trolls and haters and comment wars. There’s no way to police all of it… yet. But social media is still evolving and is nowhere near finished making history.
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