Social Media Change

How has social media changed communication?

I think I'll focused first on how it has personally affected me as I've gone through the transition in my life. Communication used to be such a simple thing to me, and it might've had to do with the fact that I was actually quite a bit younger before social media surged onto the scene of the communication world. I think a lot of my group set up came through phone calls and flyers. The biggest example I can think of is that when my friend and I would be bored on a summer night and looking for something to do we would both go through our whole contact lists and call every girl we knew until someone would give us the thumbs up. It was slow, systematic, painful, and generally unsuccessful. Comparing that to how we get things set up now days is just night and day. Now we just go on Facebook, throw up a post about a plan, wait for responses and get to the activity as soon as we can.

Another example would be to get my birthday parties set up. As a little kid I was ambitious in my party set ups. Even from the early elementary school years I would try and invite as many friends as possible to my parties, half for the friendship and half for the presents. Now I've noticed a huge change in whom I can invite. Back in the passing out flyers for my friends days I would be limited to my class and maybe a few other friends in the school. Comparing that to recent parties I've had a much larger range of invitees. School aren't a barrier for me and distance poses more of a threat to them coming rather than me inviting.

These two changes in my communication thanks to social media have macro level impacts. As people plan and coordinate events, parties or just hang out the two large influences social media will have on their communication would be speed and efficacy.

The speed of communication isn't just affected by the internet anymore and the internet itself is just a medium for the real speed increase that social media has. When one person hears about something they find worth posting or commenting about on social media it will automatically reach several other individuals. The ripple effect begins and that information can travel across the global as fast as our fingers can type or click. Before social media there had to be intention give to try and get that information to other countries or even states. Now it almost becomes the default route of social media posted information.

The efficacy is in the connections that are made or sustained. The messages you hope to convey to certain individuals are now just a few clicks away instead of phonebook searches, internet investigations or extension checking into a few small pieces of information to find one person. With most social media sights just knowing there name is enough to get you to where you want to be extremely efficiently.