What is social media? It is amorphous, and definitions of the term are constantly shifting with the rapid evolution of technology. As new forms of online communication become available to us, the delineation between social media and interpersonal relationships continue to blur. 

What we think of today as social media began under the umbrella term “social network,” and it was distinguished by its ability to foster multidirectional communication.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, most of the internet consisted of one-way communication—a web developer would post information for others to consume, but mechanisms for active engagement and response were limited. Social network websites like Friendster, Myspace, and the fledgling Facebook empowered people to share updates about their life and then participate in online conversations around those updates.

These social networks, which developed the internet’s capacity for digital conversations, were the catalyst for a radical paradigm shift that came to be known as “Web 2.0” and has come to fundamentally redefine words such as “friend,” “like,” “post,” and “share.”

Types of Social Media

In 2009, researchers Andreas M. Kaplan and Michael Haenlein defined six broad categories of social media:

  • Collaborative projects
  • Blogs
  • Content communities
  • Social networking sites
  • Virtual game worlds
  • Virtual social worlds

In the years since, though, the distinctions between many of those categories have blurred and new categories have been added.

In 2014, Philip Seargeant and Caroline Tagg, linguistics experts who specialize in digital communication, described social media as any kind of “internet-based sites and platforms which facilitate the building and maintaining of networks or communities through the sharing of messages and other media.” This type of definition would include established social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, and would also include emerging platforms that provide niche communications outlets, such as Slack (instant messaging and collaboration), Twitch (live streaming of video game consoles), and Zoom (video chats).

As our society becomes more broadly connected to the internet, and as connection speeds increase to allow for faster transfer of data, we are integrating these social media platforms more deeply into our daily existence.

A 2018 Pew Research Center study revealed that in 2017 more than two-thirds of all adults in the United States used social media and more than three-fourths of all adults owned a smartphone. Another study, which concluded that over two-thirds of adults in the United States use Facebook, determined that approximately three-quarters of them use the platform daily.

Psychologist Sherry Turkle, who studies the impact of technology on our perceptions of self and our relationships with others, has spent decades interviewing people about their uses of technology. In her most recent book, Alone Together, she noted that we are increasingly tethered to our smartphones—we are connected today in ways that we have never been before.

The Potential of Social Media

This rapid integration of social media into our lives has not happened by chance. From its earliest days, social media has promised the world to us.

It has allowed us to have routine conversations with friends and relatives from whom we would have otherwise grown distant. It has empowered us to share the ordinary moments of our lives (which are sometimes the most meaningful parts) with the people we care about. It has brought us access to people, cultures, and languages from all over the world. It has given us knowledge and insight into the most obscure corners of our curiosity, and all at the tips of our fingers—or, today, at the prompt of just our voice.

Early advocates for the potential of the internet often referred to it as a “global village” which would make the world flatter—more globalized—and draw the entire planet closer together.