The History of Social Media

By Lloyd Bravo

I can hardly remember a time before waking up and immediately grabbing my phone from my nightstand to check my social media feeds for innocuous information that barely satisfies the hit of dopamine I need in order to function as a productive human being. This sense of displaced happiness is indicative of a rodent constantly gorging itself with pellets unaware of the scientists conducting a controlled experiment.

My addiction to social media has been a gradual experience that started in the days of Myspace to the current time-waster TikTok. But, why have I been so fickle over the years that I routinely change my favorite platforms to the latest trending fad within a few years? Regardless of our inhumane consumption of information, the platforms that the media is distributed on have been constantly changing to quicker exchanges of data that have blurred the lines of reality.

Like most who first delved into the void of cyberspace, I began with Friendster, started in 2002, which enabled users to develop profiles and provide content for their friends who would showcase photos of themselves or personal experiences. The company would have 150 million followers during its popularity and would decline a massive offer from Google to purchase the website. Although the website was the standard in social online interaction, the tides quickly changed as Myspace not only offered a personal internet room, but the ability to share your media with members around the world.

In 2004, Myspace became the reigning provider of social media content that enabled users, like myself, to post unrelenting music in the background and have the ultimate status indicator with our top friends list to be displayed for all who visited our page. This interface was more intuitive and user friendly that gave members control to customize their pages for their friends to envoy. After a $580 million purchase from News Corporation in 2005, Myspace was signing 200,000 new users a day by 2006. Unfortunately, due to a lack of innovation, Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg would reestablish social networking by developing Facebook and ending Myspaces’ run.

Once known only throughout Harvard and other Ivy League universities around Boston, The Facebook was initially used to utilize student profiles to make easier connections with peers on campus. However, in 2005, “The” was dropped and Facebook was launched globally and by 2008 had 100 million users and 1 trillion page views. The website was concise and clean that made interacting with the platform so simplistic that mothers around the world began to infiltrate their children’s profiles to lurk through past posts and keep tabs. The ability to seemingly share videos, pictures and messages made the website the benchmark in social media, garnering one billion users in 2012.

Facebook is still one the largest social media websites in the world by establishing continued influence among older generations. However, the influx of parents and grandparents that have inundated the website has prompted a mass exodus among many youthful users. This helped the app Instagram to become a highly proficient adversary that would limit the social media experience to photos and comments while maintaining the rush of information and clout that members enjoyed.

Developed in 2006, the once niche notion of locating bourbon bars would eventually evolve into Instagram founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. By 2010, the app that focused primarily on images of 1:1 aspect ratio and 640 pixels would eventually have 10 million followers and, by 2018, reach one billion. Instagram broke away from the long format of writing about a user’s day, by simplifying the actions with images that could be manipulated through filters provided by the app to make food look more delicious or sunsets more saturated. The Instagram trend would eventually become an issue as these filters began to cause unrealistic beauty standards and equate posts of beaches and vacations as a conventional lifestyle. Zuckerberg would buy the app for one billion dollars in 2012, but even with their acquisition, a smaller expression of status was becoming a nuisance as social media would become louder one cyber tweet at a time.

Twitter was established in 2006 and its primary user experience consisted of microblogging, called tweets, that were 140 characters in length. This innovative idea paved the way for more instant messaging and faster information distribution, especially through news websites. The character restriction would be doubled to 280 by 2017 with the capabilities to post videos for 140 seconds in length. Tweeting became a predominant method of sharing information while shortening the public’s attention span further.

More startups and companies began to try their hand at providing the next big social media platform, which included Snapchat and Vine. However, the most popular snatcher of time and cause of procrastination now belongs to the aptly named video-based media platform TikTok.

Tik Tok has become one of the most popular social media apps of 2021, with over one billion users since its launch in 2017. The Chinese-based platform was once envisioned as a lip sync and comedy app but has since become one of the most renowned and influential site since Facebook. This is due to its immensely proactive algorithm that targets the user’s interest by displaying video on subject matters that are watched the most by its members. The videos are anywhere from 15 seconds to 10 minutes and cover a variety of different topics, including dating, dieting, health, comedy, sports and home organizing, to name only a few. The relentless algorithm has been a cause of addiction and attention span concerns. With the multitude of social media platforms that have come and gone, their consistent presence has considerably shaped our culture for better and worse. According to the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of Americans are currently using Facebook. This has given a voice to marginalized ideals that are interacted within the personal bubbles of each user’s friends group and has contributed to the increase in misinforma- tion and conspiracy theory rhetoric online. This tremendous impact has influenced politics, in particular, as those who primarily get their news through social media are shown to be more susceptible to false claims and often less informed. Although instant communication has made it convenient for others to stay connected with each other across long distances, a lack of privacy is still a lingering threat that most do not realize is an issue until it is too late. The more information shared on social media also creates more opportunities for individuals to face identity theft, cyberbullying and stalking.

In just a few decades, the world of social media has changed the way we function and communicate as a society. Our daily lives are now immersed in our phones, our social media platforms, and our apps. Most even feel anxiety when they are separated from their phones, as if they were now appendages, and this dependence leaves many questions about where our attentions will be focused in the future. For now, though, I can hardly remember a time before needing to feel connected on social media but, at times, I do miss those simpler times.

By Alex Avila