What Is Social Media?

Love it or hate it, you gotta understand it.

Photo by Jeremy Zero on Unsplash

“Social media is the devil to me.”

— David Goggins

At the time of this writing, a third of humanity is on social media. It has changed how we view and interact with the world. Sometimes in a good way, but perhaps more often in a bad way:

• Social media can enable you to connect with anyone around the globe, find new friends and communities, and discover new outlets for creativity.
• However, it’s also known to aggravate negative conditions such as feelings of inadequacy, fear of missing out (FOMO), depression and anxiety, cyberbullying, and unhealthy self-absorption.

As you can see, social media is a dangerous game. It has risks as great as its reward, and if you do want to play, you damn well better know the rules.

Let’s start by defining the game.

Defining Social Media

Kietzmann et al. (2011) proposed the following definition:

“Social media employ mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms via which individuals and communities share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content.”