The FUTURE and bye-byes

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The Future of Social Media

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Over the past eight weeks here on Social Ramblings, we have looked in depth at the power of social media in twenty-first century. When thinking about social media, it is ever too easy to dismiss the term as something as simple as Facebook or Twitter. However, just as I have discovered, and I hope you have too, social media is so much more powerful of a tool than a way to tell your friends what you’re up to.

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Social media has actually been around for a lot longer than you might think. Remember ICQ? I can’t. It was old instant messaging system for desktop computers created in 1996. My parents told me they used it when they first got the Internet, back in the old dial up days.

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 I don’t think anyone could have imagined the impact that social media would have on society; for many of us, it dictates our lives, with our popularity and self worth being based off how high we are rated or ‘liked’ online. But we discussed this when we looked at mobile devices. Society already posts so much about their lives online, with not a whole kept secret; where will that leave society in future?

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 The first thing that springs to mind is that society will continue the trend in expressing more and more about themselves, until there is no difference between our online and offline selves. But after thinking more deeply, I think that society will become even more selective about what they put online. Employers are now notorious for checking out potential employees online before even asking for an interview; society will be so very careful with the image they construct online of themselves. This links with the discussion on online identities, we are able to construct any image we like of ourselves online relatively easy, there’s nothing stopping anyone from constructing the perfect candidate image online. 

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I also believe that society will become even more self-conscious about how popular they are perceived to be online. This in turn will lead to more politicians using social media as a tool to measure their popularity and try to ‘connect’ with younger generations. 

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If you have time look through this photoset on Tumblr about Kevin Rudd's social media tactics, good fun.

When thinking about the future of social media it can lead us to believe that soon, society will be doing everything online; we just have to remember that some experiences are best kept offline.

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This will be the last post on Social Ramblings; I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay. Blogging has been a really fun way to express ideas about anything with the world. And although it can be a bit controversial at times (see Extremists and anti-corruption) it gives anyone with Internet access the potential ability to reach as many people as well known scholars, politicians and celebrities. 

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Thanks for sticking around for my ramblings,

-Carla.