Social media is a form of technology that is experiencing constant evolution.
It is well-known worldwide that social media platforms have become an important aspect of everybody’s daily lives and continue to experience expeditiously growth. Research concludes that “approximately 88% of young adults aged 18-24 use at least one social media account” (Boehm, 2019, p. 143). This statistic calls attention to the tremendous part that social media plays in so much of today’s young adults' lives. This is something that society and the world as a whole need to evaluate the implications that this technology holds on our interpersonal relationships, privacy, and well-being. While social media will continue to evolve and adapt to society, the big question that ponders in everyone’s minds is how it will evolve, and if it will be for the better or worse.
Influencers
The most prominent thing that is currently highlighted in social media is the increasing popularity of influencers. Social media influencers are defined as “individuals who have a large following of consumers on social media” (Lin et al., 2021, p. 55). Influencers will typically do brand deals with numerous companies, which allows companies to have more of an outreach with products being advertised to specific audiences and groups of consumers. By using this marketing strategy, companies allow influencers to “mediate the branding message to enhance the brand’s appeal to their followers”, which will persuade others to purchase the products (Lin et al., 2021, p. 58). Based on how influencers are taking over the social media presence of the marketing, it is without a doubt that businesses and companies will continue to expand their reliability to those with power on social media to advertise and be the brand voice for their customers and products.
User-Generated Content
Another prominent feature that shows that social media is constantly evolving is how user-generated content is starting to become more developed and personalized across the different social media platforms. Algorithms are essentially the key that allows social media to function as smoothly as it has been over the past decade. The usage of user-generated content across multiple platforms allows users to feel more engaged with what they are seeing on the apps and can continue to get more customized feeds.
While this may be seen as a major positive and win for social media, it also carries the burden of a massive downside. Many Gen Z adults rely on social media as their primary way to get global and local news, but algorithms may impede that ability to do so. Algorithms have a sense of control over what we see on social media platforms, which can cause users to not be engaged with and be up-to-date with all of the current events, essentially causing a bubble around the information.
Even though user-generated content may cause specific filters and biases on everybody’s personalized feed, there are many ways that social media can bypass this issue. Personalized content will continue to only become more important as time progresses, allowing the user’s experience to become more enhanced. The downside of the bubble around information, it is an issue that can be adapted in the future, since it can be easily avoidable.
Idea "Borrowing"
Similar to numerous news sites and programs “borrowing” ideas from each other, social media is similar in the sense that “there is a complementary rather than a competitive relationship” between all of the platforms that are constantly gaining inspiration from each other (McIntyre, 2014, p. 10). This is a feature that has been happening since the development of multiple platforms. For instance, when BeReal became popular in 2022 for the idea of snapping a photo when a timer goes off at a random time in order to be anti-social media, Instagram and TikTok jumped on the trend and immediately implemented that idea into their software. Another big feature that became popular and normalized across apps is the usage of short videos, which originated from TikTok. As new social media apps come and go, mainstream platforms, like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, will continue to adapt different features to fit the needs of their apps, which will eventually cause all of the apps to become very similar in how they operate.
Conclusion
Social media is an ever-growing technology that is here to stay in our lives, especially with its constant growth in popularity. From now and into the future, influencers will continue to be an essential part of online marketing for numerous businesses, user-generated content will continue to produce algorithms that become more personalized and engageable, and different platforms will continue to borrow and adapt ideas from each other.
References
Bohem, N. (Fall 2019). Stuck on Social Media: Predicting Young Adults’ Intentions
to Limit Social Media Use. The Journal of Social Media in Society, 8 (2), 143–
166. https://thejsms.org/index.php/JSMS/article/view/506/317
Global Media Users Future Chart. (n.d.). Oberlo. Retrieved April 19, 2023, from
https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/how-many-people-use-social-media.
Lin, C. A., Crowe, J., Pierre, L., & Lee, Y. (Fall 2021). Effects of Parasocial Interaction
with an Instafamous Influencer on Brand Attitudes and Purchase Intentions.
The Journal of Social Media in Society, 10 (1), 55–78.
https://thejsms.org/index.php/JSMS/article/view/811/435
McIntyre, K. (Fall 2014). The Evolution of Social Media from 1969 to 2013: A Change
in Competition and a Trend Toward Complementary, Niche Sites. The Journal
of Social Media in Society, 3 (2), 5–25.
https://thejsms.org/index.php/JSMS/article/view/89/43
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