There is no questioning that currently social media, and the ever-growing number of technologies that come with them, have become influential on our daily lives in ways we could have never expected. Just about everyone has had a parent, grandparent, or someone of that nature who has told them to either stop watching so much T.V, or to stop using their cell phone so much. Generally that statement is followed up with another, saying that cell phones are making us dumber, or that people our age don’t know how to communicate anymore. But these kinds of statements have been made for centuries. From Baym’s Making New Media Make Sense, we see Plato quoting Socrates, “Socrates warned the inventors of the alphabet: ‘this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls… and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing…’” I mean, this is the alphabet we’re talking about. The alphabet! Now, this isn’t an excuse to say that old people don’t know what they're talking about and they can’t accept change, but it’s a trend that’s worthy of note.
The new era of smartphones and the explosion of social media’s influence on our daily lives is truly remarkable. Most everyone, specifically the cohort of Millennials, is guilty of being engulfed by their cell phone for a big chunk of their down time, and although people are criticized for it, there are many upsides to the social media boom. The American Press Institute performed research in 2015 on millennials and their use of social media sites. Of the 91 percent of millennials that use Facebook for any reason at all, “seven in 10 click on and regularly read or watch news stories or headlines posted by other people” (API, 2015). Now, this isn’t an argument to say that social media is making millennials, or anyone who uses social media for that matter, smarter, but more so that it is making people generally more informed about current events.
In addition to being generally more informed, we may be able to glean from this study that millennials may be shying away from a particular bias that they historically could have held from their family background or upbringing. In the study, regarding those asked about what kind of articles they explore, “70 percent of Millennials say that their social media feeds are composed of a relatively even mix of similar and different opinions to their own” (API, 2015). And of those 70 percent, 73 percent of those people are willing to, and do, explore those other opinions freely. The concept of technological determinism in the sense that, “the technology is conceptualized as an external agent that acts upon and changes society” (Baym), truly reflects what is going on here in the study. People are exposed to different opinions that challenge their own, and most people are embracing that and exploring new ideas. This example of our technology leaving an imprint of itself upon its’ users seems like it may not be such a bad thing after all.
CITATIONS
Am, Published 03/16/15 12:01. "How Millennials use and control social media." American Press Institute. N.p., 01 Oct. 2015. Web. 07 Feb. 2017.
Baym, Nancy K. Personal connections in the digital age. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015. Print.
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