The Facebook Effect!
In February 2004 Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, and now engages up to 2 billion monthly users worldwide. This statistic is quite profound, as nearly 30% of the world's population have a Facebook account!
Since Facebook's emergence, we have a witnessed a major shift in social relations. Terms such as "Selfie" and "lol" have become popular usage in everyday life.
Facebook's success has encouraged others to emulate their model, where platforms such as Instagram and Twitter have emerged. Despite the success of Facebook, has the social media giant made us more vain and selfish towards each other?
Instagram - Selfie World!
It has been estimated that 24 billion selfies were uploaded to the internet in 2016. As can be imagined, a large number of those pictures were uploaded to Instagram.
On many Instagram accounts, at least 20 selfies can be seen for each account. This is quite shocking, as it shows that society is becoming more self-centered.
Instagram has allowed people to express themselves in ways that appear selfish. This selfish behavior is what gives platforms like Instagram their power and influence over us.
Snapchat's Short Life!
The major feature of Snapchat is that messages are automatically "deleted" once their read. This feature took the world by storm, as it was a new approach to messaging on social media.
Snapchat's messaging feature is quite innovative, but it has it's disadvantages. It makes people focus more on catching a person's attention, rather than actually promoting dialogue that is engaging and thoughtful.
Conclusion:
- Social media is suppose to connect people, but it seems that glorify them instead.
- Society is becoming more selfish as a result of social media.
- People spend more time on social media than with "real" people.