What do you think of as social media?

[Lark]

What do you think of as social media? Is an online forum social media or is social media only networking and linking sites like instagram or facebook?

Also, could you say whether you are old enough to remember a time before any of these existed or if your birth post-dates its existence and being commonplace.

 

[Maou]

Being able to talk to strangers online = social media. Yes, that includes videogames.

Yes, most of my childhood had no social media. I was the last generation without smart phones and easily accessable internet.

 

[ceecee]

I suppose any medium with communication/interaction can be called social media. Prayer chains, online reviews, gambling, petitioning....

 

[Earl Grey]

Anything that is mainly an IM / networking software that emphasizes social communication over other things in the form of voice or text. So, despite having a comment section, Youtube isn't social media. Despite having an IM, Steam isn't social media either (who tf chats in Steam anyway?).

I think those are reasonable limits, otherwise a broken Wikipedia page or a shared google docs is social media if you try hard enough.

I'm 'old enough' to remember a time before it existed but it was mostly because I didn't like sitting around in front of a computer and wanted to play football and the like instead. I'm one of the last, if not the last of my friends to get social media, and even my first signups were so they'd shut up*.

* if they know you have a quiet FB they would leave you and your boring ass alone, but if they thought you didn't have one, they'd badger you to "Come oooon! Give it a shooot! You won't know till you tryyyyyy"

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

I think all online social interaction is social media, but I think differently about anonymous, vs. real name social media. I treat these two categories differently, but there are many ways they are the same. This forum is social media, but not career or family oriented. It is idea discussion and some types of friendship/social interaction. It is more compartmentalized. I don't have to filter everything I say because of being a freelancer needing clients. The function is very different.

 

[tony_goth]

No social media is bad. But it doesn't fit my personal life philosophy, as there are too many people who'll betray my trust. I know because, I had used FB, and it's full of virtue-signalling hypocrites. Fake love kills more people than real hate, and social medias are not designed to be a place of hate, so there will be real and fake love only, which I'm unable to distinguish. Even when hate does happen, it's going to be real or fake ; many far-righters insult minorities not because they actually hate them, but to fit in a group which happened to accept them as long as they show off their far-rightness.

One day I'll use them, for business reasons because businesses need visibility to function. But I'm not a business myself.