Social Media

"Arguments about whether new forms of sharing or collaboration are, on balance, good or bad reveal more about the speaker than the subject. . . . Societies before and after revolution are too different to be readily compared; it's simple to say that society was transformed by the printing press or the telegraph, but harder to claim that it was made better."
- Clay Shirky in Here Comes Everybody (pp. 297-298, emphasis added)

People are meant to work together in groups.  Groups are the backbone of a capitalist society.  It is human nature to want to be around and communicate with other people, at least sometimes.  Despite technological advances that allow effective long-range communication, people continue to travel long distances so that they can physically be with those with whom they communicate.  Being in a group can give one a sense of belonging, and groups can easily accomplish tasks that would be impossible for a single individual.

There are elements of our society that make it difficult to form groups.  We drive instead of walk, so we don't walk and talk with people we meet as we run errands.  In many households, both parents work, so neither parent has much time for socializing.  Many can't afford the time or the money it would take to meet with a group or to manage a group's resources.  Some have the time, but they find ways to entertain themselves with television or video games instead of relying on human interaction.  Many have a hard time finding people with similar interests.

Social media offers some solutions to these problems.  Social media makes it easy to form groups, with very little costs in terms of time and money.  Using sites like Facebook, Pinterest, or Meetup, people can easily find people with similar interests.  Despite popular belief, use of online social media tends to increase face-to-face socialization rather than decrease it.  Social media has given us a new way to form groups more easily than ever before.  But, as Shirky says in the quote above, society has been so transformed by social media that it can't be argued that society has truly been made better by social media.  While social media offers solutions to some of today's problems, it is impossible to say whether or not the pros outweigh the cons.