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Mohammad Alqarawi
Kimberly Lewis
Writing 113A
November 29th
Social Medias Evolution and Integration Through Applications
There are more than what meets the eyes when it comes to social
media. I, for one, never found myself adhered to social media in general.
However, this isnt to say that I take it for granted, far from it. Social media,
without a doubt, holds a very strong and influential power on the majority of
age groups, from first graders, to senior citizens. In this essay, I will be briefly
touching on the inception of social media, how it has slowly evolved and
started to get attention from users, the 21st centurys renaissance in social
media apps, and the becoming of the social medias civilization under the
use of mobile applications such as Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram.
During the early 70s, a group of computer enthusiasts developed a
system that they called a Community Memory for the purpose of sharing
information between both the institutions and the public. Unfortunately,
while it was a good idea to share information in a public server that was
accessible to the community, it didnt last more than a couple of years due to
high maintenance and far too expensive equipment to run it. However, it did
play a very important part in laying the egg that was hatched later by the

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developers of the BBS (Bulletin Board Systems). The BBS was basically a
gateway that allowed people around the world to connect with one another
through a private server and socialize via chatting platforms, as well as share
and exchange files, play games together, and most importantly, advertising
commercial and personal products. The BBS had found great success by
linking millions of people together throughout the world. It eliminated most
of the impediment that existed in the Community Memory in regards to
access points and modem speeds and the general equipment.
Even though BBS was successful, the general societal impact was very
minimal as there was still a very strong lack of practicality. Part was due to
having access to a computer, which was also very expensive to begin with,
and slow internet speeds. In the early to mid-90s, when the internet became
more consistent in terms of speed and reliability, BBS became obsolete. As
there was the emergence of Aol and other social media terminals such as
mIRC. This era revolutionized the concept of BBS and made socializing
through the internet much more accessible to the masses. Social media
became simple to use, fast, easier to get access to, and free, and that
worked on getting a lot of people interested and started jumping on the
bandwagon. During this period, an internet culture had been conceived with
millions of worldwide users being involved. Although businesses hadnt been
benefiting on a large scale yet, internet modem manufacturers have had the
best revenue, all thanks to the demand for better internet stability to provide
an uninterrupted experience while socializing and that was it. Also, since

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letters were the main method of communication, people had improvised

thousands of slang words and abbreviations. Some examples such as BRB
which stands for Be Right Back. Another example is TYT as in Take Your
Time, and a/s/l which stands for Age, Sex (gender), and Location (country or
city basically), and many more. This is very important to know if someone
asked: where did those words come from? Now we know.
In the dawn of the 21st century, a lot had happened in the field of social
Media, which was considered to be the new age of social media, the
renaissance. This was due to several primary reasons that revolved around
the blooming technological advancements in hardware developments. Faster
processing speeds, for example, made it possible to pack and unpack large
amounts of data in very short times, as well as bigger RAMs for higher cache
memory. Also, minimizing production costs, which ultimately led to the
lowering of retail prices and thus had provided more accessibility solutions.
And most importantly, the size reduction of hardware, which paved the way
to go mobile. This was by far the most important part of the new age of
social media, because this had opened up the gates for software developers
to come up with mobile applications such as Snapchat, Twitter, and
Instagram, the most popular social media applications of today. That being
said, having access to these applications via mobile technology is regarded
to be the fundamental reasons as of why social media is what it is today. This
implication is based on the fact that with a mobile device, such as the smart
phones, people have access to these applications twenty-four hours a day,

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seven days a week. And this is the crux of the power and influence of
contemporary social media today.
First of all, what are those apps? And why are they very popular? The
answer is simple, they provided what was missing for a large number of
people, which was the self-esteem and confidence that was necessary for
them to socialize. There are people who lack the ability to establish a real life
relationship with others and communicate face to face. Those people have
found social media apps and networks to be the perfect solution for their
problem. Anti-socialists were, and still are considered to be a group of people
with a very intricate psychological case to solve among all societies and in all
demographics. A lot of people hold interest in socializing, but unfortunately,
they lack the ability to do so as they havent had the proper training or
experience in their becoming of a social human being; therefore, they resort
to socializing using a digital faade instead in order to overcome their social
anxiety. There is an article by a graduate student in media psychology
Guillermo Farfan (Social Anxiety in the Age of Social Media) that mentioned
how people are becoming very adherent and prone to participate in social
media applications nowadays to the point where it became an integrated
part of their lives. And that there is also a new generation of kids which have
reached a point where they believe that there is an online component in
socializing. This might sound as a helpful element to the current situation of
those who find difficulties to initiate a face to face social experiment, but
there is also a very dark side to it. Some kids, and people in general, are

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losing their ability to conduct a social interaction due to their lack of

practicing it. In a way, people are starting to get into awkward situations
where they dont know how to act accordingly. For example, when two
people meet in the street, before the blooming social media, they used to
stop, say hello, and spend a few minutes talking and catching up, while now
is rarely the case, as they could stop and say hello and end up staring at
each other, not knowing how to interact properly, because some people
forgot how to. Social media is creating a void with the apps such Snapchat,
twitter, and Instagram, which they are all slowly leading society toward a
social suicide.
Lets take a closer look at these apps and see how far deep they are
interfering with our daily socialization. Instagram, for example, is an app that
revolves around taking and sharing photos and videos with ones followers or
to the public, and the ability to put comments as well. Instagram has proved
to be useful in many ways, for what its worth, some people reported how fun
it is watching photos of cheesecakes, some random person who just bought a
new bike and shared some picture and videos, a girl putting makeup on and
so on. The amount of people who use Instagram is reported by many online
sources including (AdEspresso) that track such statistics to be in the vicinity
of 75 million users on a daily level. This is a lot of people who are actively
using Instagram every day, and the higher percentage of those users are in
the age groups from 16 to 34. It also suggested that over %70 of college
users use Instagram. The majority of those users are strongly engaged in the

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app that occasionally they would bump into each other while walking in their
campus. I have personally saw that with my own eyes. What makes this
worse on those people is the fact that companies and private entrepreneurs
who are exploiting the users engagements by slipping in their products into
Instagram via public profiles as a mean of advertisements. All types of
products which comprise of interest to the users, which makes them even
more hooked and some people have reported that their addiction to their
devices while using Instagram is very strong, they scroll and scroll and cant
stop going through their timeline as their goal is to reach the last point which
they started at in their previous session.
Then we have Snapchat. Some people like to compare it with
Instagram, where users can shoot and record anything using their cell
phones, except in the case of Snapchat, a user can only record videos for up
to 10 seconds and share it to their circles of friends. They can also share
photos and that will last for10 seconds as well. Then the content will be
automatically deleted and gone forever. This idea of spontaneity was very
appealing to a lot of people, and thus, Snapchat became very popular as
well. Unfortunately, Snapchat had been a center of concern among the
parenthood community on a very large scale. First of all, the majority of
snapchat users are young teenagers, based on the same source
(AdEspresso). Teenagers never fail at improvising means to express their
strong emotions, in this case, sexting. Sexting is being two, or more
members, share pictures and videos of their bodies fully naked to each other.

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Since the content will be removed, there is no notion of one person having
an acquisition of anothers indecent photo or video. This is not the case as it
has been reported on many occasions that Snapchat content can in fact be
undeleted and abused by others. Parents had reported several nightmarish
events were their children were exposed after being hacked or double
crossed by their friends, or ex-friends in this case. Usually, there is nothing
that can be done when it comes to that point. The only thing that is required
is a very strong parental guidance that revolves around what should they
know about Snapchat and what are the best ways to limit such accidents.
There are several seminars that parents can join for free to get that sort of
education, as well as online sources such as an article in forbs website (Larry
Magid) that gives a lot of information on how to be a vigilant parent against
Snapchat.
And finally, we have twitter, which is the oldest application among the
three and proved its efficacy in the field of social media as it was very simple
and straight forward. In fact, when twitter was first introduced, it was being
advertised as the SMS (Short Messaging Service) of the internet by its
founders. And thats true because in twitter, users can only write up to 140
letters. This has been proven to be very successful as people usually dont
feel like reading long entries, instead, a short conclusion is considered to be
enough, which is manifested in twitters text box that can only hold enough
to share a very concise story or a telling of some sort to ones friends and
followers. However, twitters simplicity made it extremely addicting to the

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point where users cant detach themselves from it since they get to know
whats going on with the people theyre following very fast and efficiently, so
they just keep going on reading and not paying attention to anything else.
This is also because of the fact that a twitter user can very much follow any
person they wish to follow, such as celebrities for example. What did they
do? What are they doing now? What are they planning on doing in the near
future? Catching up with their favorite people became as close as being a
never ending adventure, which they love to do so much. The addiction can
clearly be observed by anyone who attempts to have a conventional social
interaction with someone who is engaged in twitter.
With all what have been said, social media has without a doubt, paved
the ways of the future in the field of information exchange. There is no
denying that contemporary social media had revolutionized the process of
sharing and exchanging information from one point to another. As well as the
ability to advertise, whether its a product or an event, with high efficiency
based on likes and search histories. And most importantly, helped those who
had difficulties socializing face to face with a solution that works.
Unfortunately, nothing comes with only pros and no cons. Social media
through apps such as Snapchat, twitter, and Instagram, had proven to be
extremely addictive on a very large scale of daily users where they have lost
their sense toward traditional socializing. Many people suffer great addiction
and a very short attention span toward anything other than their social
media profiles (Larry Magid). This has ultimately helped in the creation of the

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void between the member of society that we all should acknowledge its
existence.

References:
Gotter, Ana. "Snapchat vs. Instagram: Which Should You Use?" AdEspresso.
N.p., 05 Aug. 2015. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.
Farfan, Guillermo. "Social Anxiety in the Age of Social Networks." Association
for Psychological Science RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2015. web
Magid, Larry. "What Is Snapchat and Why Do Kids Love It and Parents Fear It?
(Updated)." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 1 May 2013. Web. 27 Nov. 2015. web