The Conversation of the Past 2 Decades

 How important is Social Media?

    Everyone will give you a different answer to how important social media is to them. Generalizing, it's usually the younger generations that consider social media a necessary part of everyday life. Yet there are still those who haven't used any social media beyond owning a Facebook account to connect to other things such as this blog needing an email or google+. No matter how important you think it may or may not be, social media is here to stay and has only grown since the early days of the internet. In fact, it has grown so much that it intrudes on our everyday life. Social media goes as far as tracking our likes and dislikes and then sells that information for a sizable profit, as well as social media buying information from third-parties to help create even more of a profile of who we are on and off of social media; all for the sake of money. Nevertheless, we can't just point the blame at social media and pretend like we don't give into the intrusiveness and controversial arguments that happen within social media. The general public was given the opportunity to write whatever they want and can even do so without showing their identity. Anonymous arguments and on a platform for the whole world to see with the only repercussion being an angry reply. Social media will only ever be as nice as the people using it, no matter what the company decides to do with the information posted to its website.

    Social media is unavoidable, and it is the new frontier in which we fight our wars. Just recently the United States has started banning Chinese created apps and social media platforms, just to prove a point out of pure spite, it's childish. Two governments deciding that they don't want virtual contact, sort of like a parent telling you not to be friends with someone at school since they think they aren't good for you to be hanging around with. Unsurprisingly the regulars to the social media that was in question just found a way around it with VPN's and so on, yet it just shows how important social media is in the world.

    Social media has been the talk of the decade and was even an important discussion two decades ago. It isn't going anywhere whether people want it to or not and will continue to change over time just as it has been. Social media began with just a simple way to talk to each other and has evolved into a place that lets you yell at companies and organizations in 280 characters or less. A place where even the president of a country can vent and yell into the internet without proper consequences. Social media has taken many forms since the start of the internet and will continue to change alongside the internet. Possibly even preceding the internet in it's changes and helping the internet follow in its path instead of the other way around.