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Abstract
This paper aims to illustrate just a few of the positive influences social media technologies have had thus far on communities by bringing people together for open discussions and sharing of interests and ideals through political activism, creation of online communities and strengthening relationships with family and friends. By concentrating on the positive aspects of social media technologies on communities this paper attempts to instill confidence and enthusiasm to all those using social media platforms but especially those who may be a little hesitant in embracing the full potential social media has to offer.
Introduction
Communities have existed from the dawn of mankind and have continuously evolved with advancements in industry and technology. Communities have developed over time from small close-knit groups where everyone knew each other intimately to the vast communities of today where members can global. Social media has contributed positively to the fostering of strong communities, creating diverse and widespread networks and feelings of belonging within those communities by allowing people to communicate freely on multiple levels through a simple and efficient means of communication. In this regard social media could be seen to have opened up channels of communication to users from all 'walks of life'.

Before beginning this paper it is noted that there are numerous articles, journals, books etc. arguing for and against the effects of social media on communities but this paper will concentrate on some of the specific positive influences social media has and is having on communities through political activism, creation of online communities and enhanced relationships with family and friends.
Brief History of Communities
Communities have always existed it is just their structure that has changed, developed along with the times. Early communities, referred to as "Preindustrial Communities" by Hampton (2016), were relatively small, tight, close-knit communities with extremely limited diversity and a very limited number of social ties. Hampton and Wellman (2018) describe these early communities as consisting mainly of family, friends and neighbors with strong connections. Wellman (2001) defined these communities as being restricted to the "interactions that could take place between households that could travel the relatively short distance for 'door-to-door' interaction" (p. 228).

With the onset of industrialization community structure was able to diversify due largely to population transitioning from rural areas to urban cities and "escaping the domination of small, social circles that typified early community life" (Hampton K, 2016, p.107). As the population became more mobile and able to travel greater distances "it was possible to maintain relationships beyond those that could be achieved by door-to-door contact alone" (Hampton K, 2016, p.107). In addition to increased mobility, communication technologies were also developing to the point "where communication was instantaneous and increasingly free from boundaries" (Hampton K, 2016, p.107) particularly the telephone. These developing technologies allowed communities to communicate over far greater distances and diversify their activities encompassing a much wider variety of interests, enabling communities to engage in more social communication.

In more recent times there have been some gigantic leaps forward in communication technologies which have redefined community and facilitated expansion of some communities on a global scale. It is through these developing technologies that social media has emerged, allowing people to transform the way they maintain or create new relationships and interact with others within their community. It is the positive influences that this social media phenomenon has had and continues to have on communities and their structure that will be focused on in this paper.
Political Activism
With the continued advancements in digital technologies, especially within social media, they have opened up a plethora of communication channels available to political activists who can now access not just local but national and global communities to further their causes. Delanty (2018) puts it succinctly when writing that social media "are among the most social forms of technology ever devised; they have eliminated the distance which all previous communication technologies required and given rise to new opportunities for mass political mobilization" (p. 203). In recent years the US political parties in particular have relied heavily on social media to contact their community of political supporters. Both Obama and Trump ran extremely successful social media campaigns. "The result was the building of a national collective identity around a sense of community as a shared collective purpose" (Delanty G, 2018, p.204). Social media is a far more cost effective and speedier method of spreading a political message than the more traditional modes of communicating such messages which is why it has become such an important weapon in the arsenal of many a political party.

The vastness of social media allows for those less fortunate within the community, who otherwise may not have a voice, to shine a spotlight on relevant issues and gather support. Delanty (2018) suggests that social media, "can be a valuable resource for social movements offering an affordable, flexible and informal medium for trans-border communications" (p. 217). Once the community at large is made aware of particular issues put forward by these "marginalized voices" (Delanty G, 2018, p.217), these issues can then be discussed, deliberated over and even protested about if enough support is gained in the greater public community.

A prime example of social media being used to inform communities and instill political change was within the political movements of the Arab Spring. Hussain and Howard (2016) described it as "people sharing an interest in democracy built extensive networks and activated collective action movements for political change" (p. 1). Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter were used to spread ideas and generate support across a diverse community in order to try out "new strategies as events took place on the ground" (Hussain M & Howard P, 2016, p.21). It was this community support gained through social media that enabled the success of the major street protests and laid the foundation political change. The Arab Spring uprisings were a milestone for the use of social media in political activism. It allowed the community to "consume political content" and "created a sense of shared grievances, and strong political efficacy that had not led to such sizable, diverse and quick mobilization before the Arab Spring" (Hussain M & Howard P, 2016, p.21). Facebook and Twitter played a pivotal role in giving Egyptians access to "political discussion across vast social networks" (Hussain M & Howard P, 2016, p.4) which enabled political activists to better co-ordinate protests with great success. It was the extensive use of Twitter that first spread the news of the protests in Egypt with the outside world.

Social media continues to play an intrinsic role in political campaigns, whether they be for individuals or parties in elections, or important issues being aired in public to ensure community awareness, and will remain a crucial tool for political activism for some time to come.
Online Communities
With the ever increasing popularity of social media more and more people are finding like-minded individuals online and forming social clubs and groups based around similar interests, hobbies, opinions and ideas which fosters a traditional sense of community and are not bound by locality or distance. Hampton and Wellman (2003) describe this phenomenon as community fragmenting "into new virtual realities of shared interest" (p.277). They go even further by suggesting that

"Internet utopians have been enthralled at the community-expanding possibilities of online connectivity. They contend that the Internet has created a whole new form of community, the 'virtual community', which frees communications from the constraints of geographical proximity and social characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic status" (Hampton K, & Wellman B, 2003, p. 281).

Social media is littered with groups of people discussing topics of interest, through mediums that did not previously exist. Social media has provided Internet users with exciting and effective new ways to communicate. Fostering new relationships in this way enables total strangers to connect and converse with others creating a wonderful sense of community with the real possibility of forming "new, long-term social ties" (Hampton K, Sessions L, & Ja Her E, 2011, p.134). Social media applications like Facebook offer the socially isolated immense possibilities to connect online through these social groups via conversation, photos, video, etc. giving them a sense of belonging, friendship and to a certain extent support if needed. Delanty (2018) describes these social groups as virtual communities and "that their distinctive nature consists in their ability to make communication the essential feature of belonging" (p. 201).

One of the most important aspects of a community is that feeling of belonging to something special, sharing ideas and feelings which in turn strengthens friendships and bonds between contacts which no longer has to be defined by locale but rather "as a system of social relations" (Delanty G, 2018, p.214) facilitated through social media. These new technologies are "producing communities of similarities" (Delanty G, 2018, p.214) where people are congregating and having discussions relating to subjects of personal choice and based around similar cultures, enhancing feelings of belonging and togetherness which are the foundations of a strong community.

Another feature of a strong community according to Ray Oldenburg (1999) is the importance of having somewhere other than work or home to meet and enjoy common interests, share ideas, have fun and be sociable, which he refers to as a 'third place'. He lists some of the characteristics of a 'third place' as being a "social leveler or a level playing field for participants" (Lukito Y, & Xenia A, 2017, p.2) where they can feel comfortable and converse at will, "conversation is the main activity", (Lukito Y, & Xenia A, 2017, p.2), it must be accessible and accommodating, accepting of anyone who wants to join in and should convey a feeling of comfort and familiarity. Oldenburg was referring to physical places such as cafes, halls or other meeting places within local neighborhoods but now scholars such as Lukito and Xenia (2017) are referring to social media platforms in the same light as safe 'third places' for people to meet, have meaningful interaction with like-minded individuals and create social groups based on similar interests, which generate those feelings of belonging, acceptance and friendship that make for a strong online community.
Relationships / Contacts
Communities develop and evolve over time just as do the people within those communities, making and losing contact with friends and family through varying stages of life due to a number of circumstances but social media has now made it much easier to keep so many more of the relationships that would have fallen by the wayside before the advent of social media, in turn strengthening support and belonging within the community. Social relationships are forever changing through primary and secondary school, university, different jobs, marriage, travel, etc. and previously many of the contacts made along the journey of life would be lost but social media has introduced a far easier and more efficient means of communication allowing people to remain in contact with those "significant others" as described by Burke and Kraut (2014). Hampton and Wellman (2018) wrote that technologies like social media (Facebook) have enabled "people to sustain contact without substantially drawing from the time and resources required to maintain ties through other channels of communication" (p.647), backing the point that it is now easier and requires less effort to remain in contact with a larger number of family and friends, leading to a diversification of an individual's core networks, increasing the number of closer ties within those networks and greater support in times of need, enhancing the feelings of safety and belonging within a community. Many scholars including Burke and Kraut (2014, Hampton and Wellman (2018) and Delanty (2018) believe that social media, in particular platforms such as Facebook are an integral tool within the arsenal of communication channels between family and friends.

One particular group within the community that has benefited from the ease of use of social media are older adults who can quite often feel left out, alone or feel a hindrance to their families and friends rather than the important role models and nurturers they most often prove to be. Social media has given this group within the community a new lease on life and many are grasping this opportunity with both hands and flourishing.

Scholars like Wang, Zhang and Wellman (2018) and Siibak and Tamme (2013) conducted studies which involved interviewing older adults and discussing their use of social media. Both these studies reiterated the point made earlier that social media has been of great benefit to older adults in the community. Wang, Zhang and Wellman (2018) concluded that these new technologies "expanded the geographical reach of the older adults' social networks, facilitated communication with peers and younger generations, helped organize social and group events, promoted diversity and augmented the exchange of social support" (p.692). Siibak and Tamme (2013) made a number of important observations regarding older adults including that social media (Facebook) "had enabled then to reconnect and socialize with members of the extended families and long-lost relatives" (p.78) as well as realizing that "the feeling of closeness that web-based communication channels was crucial, especially for those members who lived far away and hence did not get to see their loved ones often" (p.78). Very simply, social media has allowed older adults to feel connected, appreciated and welcome in their families and friend's lives leading to a strong sense of wellbeing and belonging and according to Yuan et al (2015) will "have a profound impact on their general quality of life" (p.1). By giving people the option of broadening their contact networks social media has enhanced people's feelings of connectedness and belonging which can only strengthen the community as a whole.
Conclusion
Communication technologies have made significant advancements in recent years developing social media platforms that have created faster, easier and more efficient means of communication. Social media has brought people together from all across the globe, uniting those with common interests, political beliefs or simply bring families and friends closer together. The use of social media platforms has instilled feelings of connectedness, safety and belonging amongst those availing themselves of this technology which has strengthened and empowered community networks on a global basis.
References
Burke, M., & Kraut, R. (2014, April). Growing closer on Facebook: Changes in tie strength through social network site use. Paper presented at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Delanty, G. (2018). Virtual Community: Belonging as Communication (Chapter9). Community 3rd edition. Routledge.

Hampton, Keith N. 2011. ''Internet as a Leveler between Advantaged and Disadvantaged Communities.'' Pp. 205-10 in Public Sociology: Research, Action, and Change, edited by P. Nyden, L. Hossfeld, and G. Nyden. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Hampton, K. N. (2016). Persistent and Pervasive Community: New Communication Technologies and the Future of Community. American Behavioural Scientist. 61(1), 101-124.

Hampton, K. N., Sessions, L., & Ja Her, E. (2011). Core networks, social isolation, and new media: Internet and mobile phone use, network size, and diversity. Information, Communication & Society, 14, 130-155.

Hampton, Keith N., and Barry Wellman. 2003. ''Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb.'' City and Community 2:277- 311.

Hampton, K. N. & Wellman, B. (2018). Lost and Saved . . . Again: The Moral Panic about the Loss of Community Takes Hold of Social Media. Contemporary Sociology. 37(6), 643-651.

Hussain, M. M., & Howard, P. N. (2013). What best explains successful protest cascades? ICTs and the fuzzy causes of the Arab spring. International Studies Review, 15, 48-66.

Lukito, Y. N., & Xenia, A. P. 2017. Café as third place and the creation Of a unique space of interaction in UI Campus. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science 99. Doi: 10.1088/1755-1315/99/1/012028

Wang, Hua, Renwen Zhang, and Barry Wellman. 2018. ''Are Older Adults Networked Individuals? Insights from East Yorkers' Network Structure, Relational Autonomy, and Digital Media Use.'' Information, Communication & Society 21:681-96.

Wellman, Barry. 1979. ''The Community Question.'' American Journal of Sociology 84:1201-31.

Siibak, A., & Tamme, V. (2013). Who introduced granny to Facebook? An exploration of everyday family interactions in web-based communication environments. Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook, 11, 71-89.

Yuan, Shupei, Syed A. Hussain, Kayla D. Hales, and Shelia R. Cotten. 2016. ''What Do They Like? Communication Preferences and Patterns of Older Adults in the United States: The Role of Technology.'' Educational Gerontology 42:163-74.

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How Social Media has had a positive influence on community and broadened communication across communities., Debating Communities and Networks XII

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How Social Media has had a positive influence on community and broadened communication across communities.

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Many platforms allow users to join groups or explore hashtags. This feature can bring people who can build relationships with you based on shared interests, hobbies, etc.

Provide people with a place for belonging and support

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Small interactions can make people feel connected even when long distance

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Inspiring connections while working apart

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Research by Stanford psychologist Greg Walton shows how people don’t have to be physically together to still feel a sense of togetherness.

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Maintaining friendships and staying updated on each other's lives

Better connected with friends

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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Given the thorough integration of social media into the lives of the majority of American teens, it is no surprise that these sites play an important role in the establishment of friendships and the everyday back and forth of peer relationships. This chapter takes an in-depth look at the role of social media in teens' friendships, looking at teen friendships more broadly defined.

Social media is an important venue for interaction and conversation among America's youth. Fully 76% of all teens use social media. Facebook is the dominant platform, with 71% of all teens using it. Instagram and Snapchat also have become increasingly important, with 52% of teens using Instagram and 41% using Snapchat. One-third of American teens use Twitter and another third use Google Plus. Fewer teens use Vine or Tumblr.

Social media plays a critical role in connecting teens to new friends, allowing teens to learn more about new friends and get to know them better. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of teens who have made a new friend online say they have met new friends on a social media platform. Two-thirds (62%) of teens say they've shared their social media username with a brand new friend as a way to stay in touch.

Beyond making new friends, social media is major way that teens interact with their existing friends. More than nine-in-ten teens (94%) say they spend time with friends on social media. Fully 30% say they spend time with friends on social media every day, and another third (37%) say they do so every few days. When asked to rank the ways they communicate with friends, social media sites like Facebook or Twitter are one of the top ways of communicating with friends for two-thirds (66%) of teens.

As discussed earlier in the report, social media is a critical platform for making and staying in touch with friends. Given this, and the frequency with which many teens use social media, it is not surprising that teen social media users report that social media makes them feel better connected to their friends' feelings and to information about what is going on in their friends' lives. More than eight-in-ten (83%) social media-using teens say social media makes them more connected to information about what is happening in their friends' lives and 70% say these social platforms better connect them to their friends' feelings.

Girls who use social media are more likely than boys to say they are "a lot" better connected to information about their friends' lives (40% vs. 26% boys) and their friends' feelings (24% vs. 16% of boys) thanks to social media.

While teens of all races and ethnicities are equally likely to feel more connected to information about what's going on in their friends' lives through social media, black youth are more likely to say they feel "a lot" more connected. Hispanic teens are more likely than whites to say they feel more connected to friends' feelings through social media, with 78% of Hispanic youth saying this compared with 65% of white youth.

Smartphones offer near constant access to friends and for social media users, their friends' online postings. Not surprisingly, teens who have access to smartphones and use social media are more likely to report that they feel "a lot" more connected to what's happening in their friends lives than teens without a smartphone. While both groups are equally likely to say they feel more connected to friends through their social media use, 36% of smartphone owners say they feel "a lot" better connected to friends while a quarter (25%) of teens without smartphone access report the same degree of connectedness.

Teens from our focus groups told us that they appreciate the way social media keeps them in the loop with friends. One high school boy explained, "One good thing to come out it is you can find out what your friends do and check on them if you're not there. So like find out who they hooked up with and what they did..."

Teens also enjoy the way social media better connects them to more people. As one high school boy said, "And you can talk to people a lot more often 'cause you don't need to see them in person."

Nearly nine-in-ten social media-using teens believe people overshare on these platforms

Even as teens often feel better connected to friends' feelings and information about their lives through social media, they also report that they are sometimes too connected to their friends' lives. Fully 88% of social media-using teens agree that people share too much information about themselves on social media, with 35% agreeing strongly. These data hold true regardless of which social media platforms teens use.

Teens from rural areas are more likely to agree strongly that people share too much information about themselves on social media than their urban or suburban counterparts, with 46% of rural teens strongly agreeing, compared with 31% of suburban teens and 39% of urban youth.

Social media not only connects teens to information and friends, but also connects them to opportunities for social support from their friends, peers and broader social networks. Among teens, 68% have received support on social media during challenges or tough times.

Following adult gender patterns around asking for and receiving social support on social media, girls are more likely to report receiving such support on social media, with nearly three-quarters (73%) of girls garnering support, compared with 63% of social media-using boys.

When examining overall support on social media during tough times, white social media-using teens are more likely than Hispanic teens to report receiving support on the platforms. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of white teens who use social media receive support for tough times on these platforms, while 59% of Hispanics receive similar encouragement. Digging down into the data, black teens who use social media are just as likely overall as white and Hispanic teens to garner support on social media in these situations. Still, they are more likely than white youth who use social media to say they receive that support frequently - with 28% of black teens reporting frequent support, while 15% of white teens report similar boosting from their online network during tough times.

Social media-using teens from households with more modest incomes are more likely than teens from the wealthiest families to say people frequently support them through challenges on social media. While 23% of teens from families earning less than $50,000 annually say they frequently have people supporting them on social media, 14% of teens from families earning more than $75,000 per year report frequent support.

Smartphone users are more likely than teens without access to smartphones to say people support them through challenges or tough times through social media. Fully 71% of smartphone-using teens who use social media say people support them through tough times on those platforms, while 58% of teens without a smartphone say the same.

Even as social media connects teens to friends' feelings and experiences in ways both positive and excessive, that same sharing can reveal events and activities to which teens weren't invited, and can lead to negative comparisons between their own lives and the lives of those they are connected to on social media.

53% of social media-using teens have seen people posting to social media about events to which they were not invited

A bit more than half (53%) of social media-using teens have witnessed others posting to social media about gatherings, events or parties that they weren't invited to. Most teens don't experience this very often, with the bulk of teens (42%) saying it happens occasionally and just 11% saying it happens frequently.

Teens from households with more highly educated parents are more likely to say they haven't been invited to events they later saw posted on social media. Two-thirds (65%) of teen social media users with parents with a college education or more say they've seen postings for events they weren't invited to, as have half (50%) of teens whose parents have completed some college and 47% of teens whose parents have a high school diploma or less.

Most teens don't feel worse about their lives based on what they see from others on social media

Social media exposes teens and adults to information about the lives of their friends. Given what we know about how teens curate and manage information posted to their social media platforms, some profiles post a highlight reel of individual lives, rather than a fuller picture of ups and downs. And while some youth feel worse about their own lives because of what they see on friends' social media postings, the majority of teen social media users say they generally do not feel bad about their lives based on what they see on these platforms.

More than three-quarters (78%) of teens say they do not feel worse about their own lives based on what others post to social media, while 21% of teens say they do. Among those who do feel worse about their lives based on what they see on social media, most do not feel this particularly acutely; 17% say they feel "a little" worse and 4% say they feel "a lot" worse.

Hispanic youth are somewhat more likely to report that they feel worse about their own lives because of social media

More than a quarter (28%) of Hispanic teens report feeling worse about their lives because of social media postings, significantly more than the 12% of black youth who feel this way. The difference between these two groups and the 21% of white teens who say they feel worse is not statistically significant.

Teens as well as adults spend time curating and planning how to present themselves in online social spaces. Adults have often admonished teens to think carefully about what they post and share online, and in many cases, teens have taken this to heart. Online profiles and presence are constructed things for youth. With this need to be careful comes a need to present themselves to multiple audiences - to be authentic and compelling to peers and to simultaneously present a potentially sanitized and appropriate digital persona to adults like parents, teachers, future employers and college admissions officers.

Teens struggle to balance the needs of their different audiences and it shows in the pressures they experience and the attitudes they express about how their peers present themselves.

A large majority of teen social media users agree that people get to show different sides of themselves on social media that they cannot show offline

Some 85% of teen social media users agree that people get to show different sides of themselves on social media that they cannot show offline. This sentiment is consistent across most major demographic groups.

Teens with access to smartphones are also more likely to say people show different sides of themselves on social media, with 88% of smartphone owners agreeing with that statement, compared with 76% of teens without a smartphone.

In one of our focus groups, a high school girl explains what she considers a positive side of social media: "It allows you to show, like, a different side of yourself. ... I mean, you can talk about different things. If you're in person with them, you can joke around. But then like if you're texting with them or talking about something serious, you can talk about serious things and politics and stuff, and it shows a different side of yourself that you might not talk about with them in person."

Roughly three-quarters of teens think people are less authentic and real on social media than they are offline

Even as teens have the opportunity to share parts of themselves on social media that they can't share in person, those same self-presentations don't always feel authentic to their peers. Roughly three-quarters (77%) of social media-using teens agree people are less authentic and real on social media than they are offline.

Again, there are few major differences among different groups of teens in their agreement with this statement.

Many teens feel pressure to curate positive and well-liked content

While a majority of teens do not feel pressure to post content that makes them look good to others (such as parents or peers), 40% of teens do report feeling pressure to post positive and attractive content about themselves. The bulk of teens (30%) report feeling "a little" pressure, while just 10% say they feel "a lot" of pressure.

Teens with more highly educated parents are substantially more likely than teens who have parents with less education to report pressure to only post content that makes them look good. More than half (54%) of social media-using teens whose parents have a college degree or more report such pressure, while about of third of teens whose parents have some college experience or a high school diploma or less say the same. The bulk of teens whose parents have a college degree (42%) report feeling the pressure "a little" - just 12% feel "a lot" of pressure to post only positive content about themselves to social media. There are no significant differences between boys and girls, different ages or races and ethnicities in feeling this pressure.

Teens who are generally more interactive with others in a digital space - using it to make friends or play games with people they have never met - are all more likely to feel pressure to only post content that makes them look good to others.

Many teens want to be liked by friends and peers and that extends to digital "likes" as well.

In addition to the pressure some teens feel to post content that makes them look good, teens also feel pressure to post content that others like and comment on. Similar to the percentage of teens who feel pressure to post content that makes them look good, 39% of teens on social media say they feel pressure to post content that will be popular and get lots of comments or likes.

One middle school girl in our focus groups explained the pressure to post cool content to Instagram and how that led to the end of a friendship: "So it's on Instagram. In my school, it's like so you post quality pictures, I guess, and that makes you cool. I don't know. It's like a lot of girls have ... they buy cameras just to do this - expensive cameras. So anyway, I guess K was accusing C of like being too much like her, and one of the reasons was because C was posting pictures. So she would edit her pictures like in such a way that it would look cool. ... I don't know how to describe it. It's just a quality cool thing, I guess. So like they lost their friendship, and part of the reason was because of her social media account."

Teens with more highly educated parents are more likely to report feeling pressure to post content that will garner likes or comments on social media. Nearly half (47%) of teens with parents with a college degree or more report feeling such pressure, while just 36% of teens whose parents have some college experience and 35% of teens whose parents have a high school diploma or less report feeling pressure to post well-liked content.

However, there are no differences between boys and girls, younger and older teens, or those of different racial or ethnic backgrounds when it comes to feeling pressure around posting content that others will like or comment on.

Teens who feel pressure to post content that garners likes or comments frequently feel that they must post only content that makes them look good. Fully 59% of teens who feel "a lot" of pressure to post popular content feel similarly pressured to post content that makes them look good to others.

42% of teens have had someone post things about them that they cannot change or control; older teens and white teens are especially likely to report this

The pressure to post content that others like and find appealing may be, in part, to counteract another challenge that teens and adults face on social media platforms: People posting content about them that they cannot control. Some 42% of teen social media users experience people posting things about them that they can't change or control, with 9% indicating that this happens to them "frequently."

Older teen social media users are more likely to say they've experienced this: 46% of teens ages 15 to 17 say they've had people posting things about them that they can't change, compared with just over a third (35%) of teens ages 13 to 14. Broadly, there are no differences between boys and girls in their likelihood of having people posting things about them that they can't change or control.

White teen social media users are more likely than Hispanic teens to report that people have posted things about them that they can't control: 45% of white teens have experienced this, as have 32% of Hispanic teens. The 38% of black youth who have experienced this is not significantly different than white or Hispanic teens. All groups, but especially white teens, are likely to say this happens occasionally rather than frequently.

Among social media-using teens, those with more highly educated parents are more likely than teens with parents with lower levels of educational attainment to experience people posting things about them that they can't change or control. Nearly half (48%) of social media-using teens whose parents have a college degree or more say content has been posted about them on social media that they can't control, while 38% of teens whose parents have a high school diploma or less report similar experiences.

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Given the thorough integration of social media into the lives of the majority of American teens, it is no surprise that these sites play an important role

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Social media has made it easier to maintain people in long-distance relationships by texting, video calling, and sharing their lives.

Social media not only let you connect with old friends but even making your relationships strong

According to

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Access to trending information (Paragraph 3)

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Access to trending information (Paragraph 3)

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Social media features to trending topics with hashtags to create a place where it allows people with specific interests to connect, discuss, share experiences, and even build relationships with each other.

Being engage with current events and popular trends on platforms, this helps with discussions and connections, which is important in socialization.

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Many platforms support community building

Long-distance communication

Access to trending information

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Our world has become more connected because of their shared humanity.

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You can talk to your favorite celebrity, make friends from across the world, spark social and political movements, and share your every thought due to the advent of social media. We have more avenues to communicate, a larger stage, and seemingly more to say than ever. In a society where our primary communication seems to have shifted to likes, retweets, and followers it begs the question: how has social media changed communication?

Instantaneous Communication

Social media has created a sense of urgency in our communication that has not been seen before. Snapchat, one of the most prominent social media platforms, is an app where people can send messages and photos to one another that disappear after a certain time period. This requires people to respond immediately or risk the message disappearing. Gone are the days of sitting and agonizing over every word that you type out to someone before hitting send. This sense of urgency though is not limited to just Snapchat, with the added feature of being able to go "live" on almost every platform. Live features show us an insight into what people are doing in real time. We don't have to wait to see your vacation photos when you are streaming your time on the beach. This ability to connect with everyone in real time creates this need and compulsion to let everyone know what you are up to immediately, causing you to post photos from your vacation before you even get back home. Just think about how far communication has come, from letters that would take weeks to get to someone, to showing everyone what you are doing at the moment.

Shorter Messages

Social media's inherent sense of urgency has also required people to adapt how they share messages. With over 330 million users Twitter has made a huge impact in communication in allowing users 280 characters (formally 140) to convey their thoughts or message. Some experts are now arguing that Twitter has changed people's attention spans and that a growing number of people are no longer willing to read more than 280 characters. We now not only expect information quickly, but we also want it brief. This need to keep things brief has also given rise to the abbreviation of words that have worked their way not only into our writing, but also our vernacular. We are communicating more than ever before, and faster than ever before, but are we actually saying less?

Communicate Across Geography, Across Cultures, Across Languages

Social media has changed the way we communicate, but also who we communicate with. It has given people the ability to communicate across geography, cultures, and languages creating an interconnected community. It has brought our attention to injustices in the world, the resiliency of the human spirit, tales of great courage, and mobilized movements. Our world has never felt more connected and social media has allowed people to communicate with one another and empathize with one another in their shared humanity. Social media has sparked movements across the country and started cultural conversations that are completely vulnerable and transparent such as the #MeToo movement, the mobilization of the Black Lives Matter movement, the Women's March, March for Our Lives, etc. Due to the power of social media, these movements have ignited national conversations and debates. Social media is not only changing the rate at which we communicate, how we communicate, but also what we are communicating about.

Social media and communication can be a tricky topic to navigate and a tight rope to walk. How do you integrate valuable and meaningful communication into the changed world of social media? How do you communicate and play to the strengths of social media? We are constantly communicating in this modern and dynamic world and companies need qualified professionals that can master these complex topics.

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How Has Social Media Shaped How We Communicate?

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Social media and communication can be a tricky. We are communicating in this dynamic world and companies need professionals to master these topics.

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Is Social Media Making Us Less Social? - Paul Pope

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Explore whether social media makes us less social by replacing meaningful face-to-face interactions with surface-level digital exchanges.

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By Linda C. Ashar, J.D. | 05/02/2024

Once upon a time, social exchanges involved conversation around the kitchen table, on the front porch, over the back fence, and on the telephone's party line. Western Union was the original Twitter. Mail was sent by letter that went through the postal system, and news was published in print media.

The advent of radio and television sped things up. Later, the internet came, connecting people on the World Wide Web, and everything changed again.

What Is Social Media?

Social media now refers to web-based applications that promote the creation and exchange of user-generated content. Social media's range is global, with its scope of topic and type of user virtually unlimited. Social media includes internet sites such as Meta's Facebook® and Instagram®, X® (formerly Twitter), YouTube®, Yelp®, and countless blogs.

Social media has become a vast, informal network of online venues - public and private, paid subscription and free, large and small. It can be used for a variety of purposes, such as:

Family celebrations

Political campaigns

Charitable promotions

Health support groups

Sports clubs

Prayer circles

Hobbies and occupations

Fundraisers

Information sources

Social media wields cultural influence on fashion and food trends, family and adolescent health issues, world news and local events, political and community action events. Social media has spawned a new type of marketing through the use of a unique, virtual public personality: the social influencer.

Social media has become a complex phenomenon because it is much more than individuals exchanging words. Social media sites - the venues where communications happen - are controlled by their platform owners.

Conglomerates like Meta have come under fire with allegations of exerting censorship on the one hand and insufficient control of content on the other. In the U.S., these problems are considered under the First Amendment. Other countries' laws might differ.

According to a 2023 Surfshark article, people in China, Iran, and Turkmenistan have been denied access to Facebook, YouTube, and X for 14 years. YouTube has been blocked in Eritrea for almost 14 years, and most major social media sites have been barred in North Korea for up to 8 years.

As Surfshark notes, that means multiple generations of 1.6 billion people are cut off from social media. Those people are confined to a cloistered, narrow world, where they have limited access to each other, as well as to other nations' people and events. These nations' blocking of social media access to their populations is tacit testimony to the power of social media at the grassroots level of society.

Social media has clarified one aspect of human behavior that is above dispute. People enjoy:

Talking with like-minded people

Railing at each other

Sharing life's joys, interests, and grief

Spending time with each other

Watching each other

Technology has enabled the social media revolution. But from the beginning, its success has been driven by this human need this human need to communicate.

The History of Social Media

Humanity is a social species by nature. When the internet entered daily life around 1983, worldwide connections became an instant possibility.

Talking to the next-door neighbor became anyone on the planet, and the backyard fence was traded for a computer monitor. Whether for private purposes or business, communication is what humans do - not always gracefully or truthfully, but certainly continuously.

Social media had its first seeds in email. The pleasure of receiving a letter from a friend in a physical mailbox expanded to the computer.

"You've Got Mail!" became a daily electronic notice in business and personal correspondence. Then, technology proliferated from clunky desktop computers to sleek compact laptops and mobile phones.

With email came email groups organized on internet sites - electronic discussion groups for people with similar interests. A leading example was YahooGroups (which closed in 2020).

The internet enabled online bulletin boards and chat room forums for information exchange and group talk. In the 1990s, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and ICQ allowed real-time text messages.

In 1994, the wiki was born. A wiki is a user-collaborative information site that can be edited by any user through a browser. According to Katie Terrell Hanna of TechTarget, "wiki wiki" means "fast" in Hawaiian, which is how the name originated.

According to Wikipedia, computer programmer Ward Cunningham created WikiWikiWeb in 1994. Today, there are reportedly hundreds of thousands of wiki sites.

The inherent catch of wiki sites is the ability of nameless users to post and edit information that is not vetted for accuracy, so other users must evaluate and correct it. This accuracy problem gives rise to a concern about "fake news." However, academic and evidence sources can also post data in wikis.

The worldwide collaborative, interactive, free access to information on virtually any topic makes wiki social media sites an important component of the social media revolution. At the very least, they are information gateways to other research sources.

In 1999, Pyra Labs launched Blogger®, a publishing platform acquired by Google in 2003. Mat Honan of Wired explains that Blogger "was a revolutionary web product" that "gave push-button publishing to the people."

Today, information is available digitally to anyone with access to a computer or mobile phone. As a result, this widespread change in communication has enabled a dramatic shift in information sharing and acquisition of knowledge that, in turn, affected lifestyles and social mores.

The 'Invention' of Social Media

The recognition of social media as a distinct entity was in 1997 with Andrew Weinreich's launch of SixDegrees. Called the " father of social networking," Weinreich forecast the social media phenomenon seven years ahead of Facebook.

SixDegrees' base was a site for email connection links. In simple terms, Weinreich's vision was networking.

Social media's networking capacity is exponential for connecting social media users' who share interests, have questions, and want to connect with others. But in 1997, the technology to facilitate such capacity had not yet caught up with Weinreich's full vision.

Weinreich sold SixDegrees for $125 million in 1999 and moved on in the industry. Social media technology, however, took off in the new millennium.

Social Media's Explosion in the 21st Century

The timeline of social media innovations in the 2000s highlights just how quickly the social media revolution advanced in that era. While wikis and other online sites were focused on general information, easier personal connections for social media use came into their own in slick online sites.

The launch of Friendster® in 2002 expanded the concept of networking occupied by email groups and virtual bulletin boards. Also in 2002, LinkedIn® established a social media site for professional and business networking.

MySpace® launched in 2003, followed quickly by Facebook in 2004. Originally created for college students, Facebook grew into the global colossus that is Meta today, eclipsing Friendster and MySpace.

In 2005, YouTube appeared. YouTube has since expanded from a collection of user-uploaded videos to include live streaming, music, advertisements, and marketing channels.

The year 2006 introduced Twitter - a real-time dialogue, news, and opinion posting system called "micro-blogging," that limits messages to short posts. Twitter quickly wielded a powerful influence, connecting social media users in real time worldwide, a popularity somewhat narrowing since Elon Musk changed the site to X in 2023.

Digital image sites like Pinterest® added a visual dimension to social exchanges in 2010. By 2016, amateur entertainment and personal influencer reels became a hit on TikTok, rivaled by Snapchat®, , Facebook's Reels, and Instagram. That same year, live-streaming took off on Facebook and Periscope (with the latter ending its activities in 2021).

According to Pew Research Center, Facebook and YouTube are the most widely-used platforms as of 2024. But as of March 2024, Slashdot lists 101 social media platforms. These sites lure users and advertisers to participate in a marketplace of social chat, to see and be seen, to buy and sell, and to be heard.

If one platform does not last in popularity, another will take its place. Emerging sites cater to niche interests and facilitate family and friend connections. They also offer emotional support and promote boutique products, health aids, charities, business brands, education, political activism, and so much more.

Whether - and how - to control of all this activity is an ongoing debate. The U.S. government has recently moved to either limit or ban TikTok® in the U.S. due to Chinese ownership interests. Sparking further controversy, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a case about federal government involvement on social media.

Social media usage is widespread and continues to grow with a variety of options. People have exchanged the backyard fence and the kitchen table for a carnival's midway of fluid conversation groups and virtual booths of barker's wares.

It is still early days for understanding all the implications of people's online habits and the inevitable changes being wrought by social media sites. Nevertheless, surveys, studies, and experts have ventured some observations and predictions about the effects of these online platforms.

The Positive Effects of Social Media

Social media wields a powerful influence. Some of the positive effects include:

Improving users' mental health

Providing an outlet for creativity

Offering opportunities for professional networking

Creating educational opportunities and social awareness

Building new business opportunities and marketing channels

Improvements to Mental Health

Social media's impact has created many positive effects for society. Mesfin Awoke Bekalu and Rachel F. McCloud concluded in a 2020 Harvard study that routine daily use of social media positively correlated with "three health-related outcomes: social well-being, positive mental health, and self-rated health."

While this national study of adult use of social media did not discount the potential negative aspects of addiction to or overuse of social media, Dr. Bekalu reported, "Our findings suggest that the ways in which people are using social media may have more of an impact on their mental health and well-being than just the frequency and duration of their use." This positive networking in turn reduces feelings of loneliness, social isolation, and low self-esteem.

Social media has created complex human interaction at several levels that happen simultaneously in a single venue, ranging from the most personal to general entertainment and news events in ways formerly segmented in separate communication channels - telephone, print media, one-way radio/TV shows, and telegraph messages.

Social media sites provide opportunities for individuals to connect with friends, family, and like-minded individuals, even across geographical distances. These connections help maintain relationships and interests, fostering a sense of belonging, self-esteem, and support in users.

Personal Expression and Creativity

In today's world, social media provides a cornucopia of offerings in art, innovation, and creativity. Part of social media's complex connections are the opportunities for sharing knowledge on virtually any topic, collaborative projects, and creative endeavors.

Whether through online forums, sharing documents, group chats, or how-to videos, individuals can work together with others to achieve common goals, create meaningful content, and solve problems collectively. They can learn how to do something they want to achieve for themselves, practice a new hobby, or pursue a sport. Outlets and tutorials foster a sense of camaraderie, community, and social well-being.

Opportunities for Professional Networking

Social media platforms offer opportunities for people to expand their social networks and forge new connections with other individuals around the world that they might not have otherwise encountered. By broadening their professional circles, people can access diverse perspectives, experiences, and resources, which can enrich their lives and enhance their social capital.

This opportunity for professional development was the idea behind LinkedIn early on. The LinkedIn platform has expanded exponentially in 22 years, a testimony to the value of professional connections for both individuals and businesses in a global marketplace.

Research supports the value of social networks in building and maintaining professional relationships. As Makena Shultz at Michigan State University noted, "A great thing about social media is that it allows you access to both your strong and weak connections. Increasing the spectrum of possible connections can help individuals and organizations identify specific parties with shared interests or goals, experience solving similar challenges, or even developed tools or methods for completing a mutual task."

The instant reach of digital technology and the variety of ways online companies have devised to maintain connections allows professionals to collaborate and share knowledge, opportunities, and innovative ideas.

Educational Opportunities and Social Awareness

Internet sites offer educational resources such as online courses and tutorials, making learning accessible to a global audience, often for free and regardless of a user's location or socioeconomic status. Many of these educational opportunities account for overcoming language barriers.

Hand-in-hand with educational opportunities are social awareness initiatives and advocacy efforts for humanitarian and social causes on both a local and a worldwide scale. Social media use enables advocates to more easily reach a global audience and discuss solutions to social issues that can better lives, such as increasing physical activity for better health and getting more fun out of life.

New Business Opportunities and Marketing Channels

Businesses can leverage social media platforms with broad audiences for brand promotion, marketing campaigns, and customer engagement. With the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms, users' search activity on a commercial or search site is directed to brands on social media pages.

For example, a user who searches for "types of mattresses" on Google, where mattresses are not sold, may later be served mattress ads on Facebook as a result of that search activity. A tracker on the search tags the user and links the user to pinpoint mattress ads on social media, which is known as remarketing or retargeting.

Sean Craig of Elite Digital Marketing explains that "User tracking is not limited to just one platform or website. Ad retargeting is a common practice where advertisements are placed on multiple websites based on a user's web browsing history. This technique allows companies to reach their target audience across multiple different platforms."

For example, the user's search activity suggests an intention to buy a mattress. Since the user appears to be in the market for a mattress, the Facebook ads help that user get to a decision and buy an advertiser's mattress.

Facebook is in it for the ad revenue, and the mattress companies hope to make a sale. The user might or might not want a mattress, but this type of advertising makes it possible to find one more easily.

Social media provides these types of marketing opportunities for businesses, individuals, and nonprofit groups. For nonprofit groups, online platforms may be used to raise awareness of a troubling issue - such as abuse or chronic disease - and for fundraising campaigns.

Social platforms host community trade groups, barter pages, garage sale days, and nonprofit events. These sites do on a large scale what local community bulletin boards traditionally have done.

The Negative Aspects of Social Media

Social media's power can sometimes be used in the wrong way to hurt others. Some of the negative effects of social media use include:

Cyberbullying

Social media use is fertile ground for cyberbullying. The Cyberbullying Research Center (CRC) defines cyberbullying as "when someone repeatedly and intentionally harasses, mistreats, or makes fun of another person online or while using cell phones or other electronic devices."

While cyberbullying can happen to people of any age, it is of particular concern for students ages 13 to 17. In a CRC 2023 national study of this age group, researchers found that 55% of them had experienced cyberbullying to the detriment of their self-worth.

Cyberbullying can take many creative forms, such as:

Embarrassing comments

Negative posts or photos

Compromising sexual images (which might be fake)

Using social media to spread rumors

Threats to the person, the person's family, or pet

Offensive videos or webpages

Cyberbullying acts can be pernicious and harmful long-term, far beyond a passing embarrassment. In the case of a young Ohioan, severe cyberbullying allegedly caused her suicide and led to the state enacting the Jessica Logan Act, requiring schools to implement active countermeasures to cyberbullying.

Doxxing

A type of privacy invasion enabled by social media use is called "doxxing." Identity theft expert Max Sheridan explains doxxing as "the unauthorized collection and public distribution of personally identifying information or private material for malicious purposes."

An example is posting a person's name, home address, email, and telephone number without that person's permission on a public social media platform. The post might be flavored with a false allegation of association with a hate group.

The private information is often obtained through social media. Doxxing is intended to cause harm and is typically motivated by revenge, hate, bullying, terrorism, or bad faith tactics.

Real-life examples of doxxing include:

Releasing the personal information of the agent and lawyer of a 2016 presidential candidate (reported by Ranker)

Publicizing the physical addresses of certain U.S. Supreme Court justices after the decision overturning Roe vs. Wade (according to Cybersixgill))

Parking a "Doxxing truck" on a college campus - the truck displayed certain faculty names and images with the accusation they are "antisemites" (reported by The Denver Post)

According to Sheridan, privacy has become an "increasingly rare commodity. Internet tools allow anyone with a connection to become an investigator and publisher. This expansive access to info and social media explains how so many have fallen prey to doxxing."

Child Exploitation

A dark side of the internet and social media is child exploitation. The global reach and speed of digital communication have enabled child pornographers and predators to flourish behind digital masks and in shadowy groups.

The ease of using social media apps and platforms on mobile devices enables predatory adults to groom children by text and live streaming, share and consume child pornography, and extort children for sex.

Minors also make this exploitation easier, intended or not, by "sexting." Sexting involves sharing explicit photos through a child's social media account or texting.

Further complicating this exploitation is the rise of "kidfluencers." Kidfluencers are children with their own channels and followers on YouTube, TikTok, or similar platforms.

Children with large groups of followers can often earn money with ad sponsors. But these kids are not considered actors or "workers."

According to Vanessa Cerzarita Cordeiro of Humanium, "Though child actors are able to gain access to numerous protection mechanisms, 'kidfluencers' are treated differently because their activity takes place in a private home setting on a platform in which parents consensually participate." They are not workers due to "the absence of an employer-employee relationship and the fact that children are deemed to be undertaking normal family activities on camera rather than putting on a 'performance.'"

For this reason, the money they are earning from their "kidfluence" has not had much protection under the traditional child labor laws and regulations. But several states and Congress are working on improving this protection, as well as privacy laws, for these minors. For example, Illinois passed a law to provide some measure of protection for kidfluencers.

Addiction

Excessive use of social media platforms and their contribution to poor mental health, especially in young people, may be cause for concern. According to the Addiction Center, social media addiction is not yet a formally diagnosed condition that damages a user's psychological well-being, but it is sufficiently recognized to be treatable and covered by some insurance providers.

The Addiction Center defines this type of addiction as a behavioral condition, characterized by "being overly concerned about social media, driven by an uncontrollable urge to log on to or use social media, and devoting so much time and effort to social media that it impairs other important life areas." In other words, the person is obsessed with social media habits such as scrolling, texting, and posting, will spend time online to the exclusion of other life activities, and may ignore family members and friends.

How can such an addiction and damage to a user's psychological well-being happen? Social media use stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain - too much for some people. The Addiction Center explains that constant interaction with an online platform triggers the "brain's reward area" chemically in the same way as drugs like cocaine, or like "a syringe of dopamine being injected straight into the system."

Social Media Use Shines a Light on Basic Human Nature

Like everything else in life, social media use is a choice. According to researchers Jenna L. Clark, Sara B. Algoe, and Melanie C. Green, the key to social media's contribution to the positive impact on mental health and social welfare is where it fosters real human connection. The way to make the best of social media is for users to choose credible providers and to be aware of social media's pitfalls.

Hawra Hashem, marketing manager and communication strategist, emphasizes that social media use can be "more beneficial than not" if users "keep a healthy perspective about social media's role in [their] lives ... [and] use it to inspire, educate, show empathy, and become better communicators." In other words, use social media with the same respect and demeanor as with in-person relationships.

Considering its positive aspects and its negative risks, social media's growth seems a given. Statista notes that "Social media consistently expands, advances, and grows around the world. The total number of social media users is expected to hit over 5.85 billion individuals by 2027, which would be over half of the world population." Considering social media's unlimited exponential capacity, this prediction could well be underestimated.

The social media revolution is well under way. The massive changes social media use has wrought in how people connect and communicate are largely positive and have improved other people's lives. It is driven by humans' very nature to communicate, collaborate, and share information.

But social media shows the dark side of human nature. It is not social media that casts darkness, but its users. Social media exposes the problems humanity needs to solve as well as the pleasures to enjoy.
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Social Media Impact: How Social Media Sites Affect Society

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Social media impact - how does it affect people in society? This article explains the origin of social media and its positive and negative effects.

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"Social media has provided Internet users with exciting and effective new ways to communicate."