How Social Media is Changing the Way We Live Our Lives

If you haven’t noticed, there is a revolution taking place in the online world. Well, there are many revolutions taking places these days due to technology, but I am referring specifically to the phenomenon known as “social networking”.

According to Wikipedia, Facebook has 200+ million active subscribers worldwide. By comparison, the United States population is just above 300 million people, so you could say that Facebook has roughly 2/3 of the entire US population. That’s a big country. Of course, the Facebook community is made up of many people from around the world, not just the US. And it’s not limited to the under 30 crowd either. While it may once have been true that social networking was a fad in college dorm rooms, today it is a legitimate way of keeping in contact with one another.

Many have joined just so they can share their lives with family and friends who are scattered across the country or around the world.

As a result, the average age of users on Facebook is steadily climbing. According to Insidefacebook.com:

• The number of users over 35 has doubled
• The fastest growing segment is women over the age of 55
• There are now nearly 1.5 million women 55+ active each month on Facebook
• The majority of Facebook users are over 25

Social networking is not just for friends and family either. LinkedIn provides a unique online setting for working professionals to broadcast their resumes to the world. They can also use LinkedIn to join industry trade groups, network with other likeminded individuals on business ideas, and search for jobs. Recruiters and employers use LinkedIn to find new, qualified applicants, many times without paying a fee (although there is a fee based service for employers who want to post classifieds and have easier access to the many potential candidates on the site).

Spigit offers companies the ability to have their own internal social networking websites, where employees can collaborate on new ideas and innovations in real time without having to be in the same place, all the while keeping the information shared private and confidential to the company.

Even the FBI and CIA have jumped on the bandwagon. They are implementing their own top secret version of Facebook. According to the assistant deputy director of national intelligence, “it’s every bit Facebook and YouTube for spies, but it’s much, much, more”.

Next we have YouTube or television for tomorrow. With YouTube, you can become a superstar almost overnight, so long as you have a video camera and access to the internet. For example, there is the famous YouTube sensation, Fred, a 15 year old child actor with over 1 million subscribers. Many of his videos have over 2 million hits, some of them upwards of 5 million hits, and he even has his own line of t-shirts through a sponsorship deal with Hot Topic.

Next we have Susan Boyle, the worldwide phenomenon from Britain’s Got Talent. Susan has earned her place in the internet history books simply because she sung one song that made the world smile. Without YouTube, she’d more than likely be a small time sensation in the UK rather than the global household name she is now. Her first performance of the famous “I Dreamed a Dream” from the Broadway hit Les Miserable has been viewed more than 150 million times on YouTube.

Then there is Twitter. A place where a college student can correspond with his congressman about an upcoming bill; a 12 year old can follow the minute-by-minute details of her favorite celebrity, down to what she is having for dinner; and some geek in Idaho can “tweet” with some geek in India about the next great video game. Of course, in an effort to regulate our disdain for information overload, Twitter requires that all communication be done in 140 characters or less. So it may not be the best platform for the long winded among us.

What’s great about Twitter is that it is sort of like a micro blog, or a Facebook status update that you keep updating as much as you want. You can also use it to connect with anyone without them granting you permission to follow their updates (although there is privacy controls, many people on Twitter opt out of them).

This means that any person can follow any celebrity, politician, or regular ole Joe so long as they have their Twitter name. Ashton Kutcher recently beat CNN in a contest to see who could reach 1 million Twitter followers first. Aston won. But the neat thing is that many celebrities and notable figures not only use it as a platform to voice their own opinions, they actively tweet back with many of their followers regularly. This could not be done before Twitter. If anything, Twitter has become the great equalizer in how we communicate and share information with each other. You don’t have to be a movie star or political figure to make your voice known. And many people are using it today to earn their own mini celebrity status (some of them with thousands of followers of their own)

Social networking, or social media, has completely changed our lives in a short period of time, and there is no going back. It’s like flip this house on steroids, only, instead of a house it’s you and me. Really, you could say that most of the change has happened slowly over the past decade. But it’s just getting started. I liken social networking to the Truman Show, except we are all both participants and audience members.We are in the middle of a turning point in the story of mankind. In fact, mankind is becoming a story of its own, one feed, wall post, and tweet at a time. Not all generations have the opportunity to play witness to such pivotal moments in history. I for one, consider myself lucky to be a part of it, even if it is 140 characters at a time.

I am a progressive blogger with a passion for writing on topics related to human rights, politics, and current events. I am available to freelance for your site or blog on issues related to these topics. Please visit my blog at http://www.jasonblogz.com or you can e-mail me directly at jasonblogz@gmail.com.

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