Apps

social media — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Notable quotes

“Many of the parents I spoke to worried that their kids’ digital habits — round-the-clock responding to texts, posting to social media, obsessively following the filtered exploits of peers — were partly to blame for their children’s struggles.”
— Benoit Denizet-Lewis, ""Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety?", New York Times’ Magazine, (Oct 11, 2017); as quoted in "Anxiety is Now the Most Pressing Mental Health Problem For American Teens" Drake Baer, Thrive Global, (October 16, 2017).
“Psychologist Chris Ferguson of Stetson University says that both the negative and positive differences identified in the research are small. "My takeaway from this is for the most part, it looks like screen use, in general, and social media use have relatively little impact on most of the outcomes the authors are looking at, with maybe the exception of sleep," he says.”
— Chris Ferguson as quoted by Sara Kiley Watson, “A Look At Social Media Finds Some Possible Benefits For Kids”, Shots, NPR, (June 19, 2018)
“If you want to help the cause of informational freedom, which is the only true religion, your talents as a social media consultant are irrelevant.”
— Lee Konstantinou, Johnny Appledrone vs. the FAA in Ed Finn & Kathryn Cramer (eds.) Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future (2014), p. 200
“The effect of this is there is no longer a free and open social media company or site for any American to get on any longer. Because these big companies—Apple, Amazon, Google—they have just destroyed what was likely a billion dollar company, and, poof, it's gone.”
— Devin Nunes in Devin Nunes Complains on Fox News 'Republicans Have No Way to Communicate' if Parler Taken Down
“What happens on social media doesn’t stay on social media. Online violence is real world violence.”
— Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, 10 December 2021
“Listening continuously and taking notes for an hour is an unusual cognitive experience for most young people. Professors should embrace — and even advertise — lecture courses as an exercise in mindfulness and attention building, a mental workout that counteracts the junk food of nonstop social media.”
— Molly Worthen "Lecture me. Really." The New York Times, (October 17, 2015).

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.

Overview

Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of content, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of social media arise due to the variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available, there are some common features: Social media are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications. User-generated content—such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions—is the lifeblood of social media. Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization. Social media helps the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups. The term social in regard to media suggests that platforms are user-centric and enable communal activity. As such, social media can be viewed as online facilitators or enhancers of human networks—webs of individuals who enhance social connectivity. Users usually access social media services through web-based apps on desktops or download services that offer social media functionality to their mobile devices (e.g. smartphones and tablets). As users engage with these electronic services, they create highly interactive platforms in which individuals, communities, and organizations can share, co-create, discuss, participate, and modify user-generated or self-curated content posted online. Additionally, social media are used to document memories, learn about and explore things, advertise oneself, and form friendships along with the growth of ideas from the creation of blogs, podcasts, videos, and gaming sites. This changing relationship between humans and technology is the focus of the emerging field of technological self-studies. Some of the most popular social media websites, with more than 100 million registered users, include Twitter, Facebook (and its associated Messenger), WeChat, ShareChat, Instagram, QZone, Weibo, VK, Tumblr, Baidu Tieba, and LinkedIn. Depending on interpretation, other popular platforms that are sometimes referred to as social media services include YouTube, QQ, Quora, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, LINE, Snapchat, Pinterest, Viber, Reddit, Discord, TikTok, Microsoft Teams, and more. Wikis are examples of collaborative content creation.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).