SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE REASON OF ITS BECOME SO POPULAR

The technology in the 21st century is getting more and more advanced, from the previous landline to the smartphone that almost everyone has in hand. The transmission of information is getting faster and faster too, people no longer need to wait for letters to cross the ocean just to convey some information. As time goes by, social media and community platforms have become popular nowadays. For some aspects, social media did help humans to easier their lives. For example, it’s convenient and fast, it brings entertainment to people, and it helps some businesses in surviving the pandemic.

In this essay, I’ll be discussing social media and how they're getting popular with my own experience.

According to Dollarhide, (2021), social media is a computer-based technology that allows people to share ideas, thoughts, and information through virtual networks and communities. Social media is an internet-based platform that allows people to share content such as personal information, documents, videos, and images quickly and electronically. Users can interact with social media using web-based software or applications on a computer, tablet, or smartphone. Users can now communicate with their friends, families, and even strangers in just a flicker.

There are a few social media that are popular all over the world. In January 2022, there are 17 social media platforms with at least 300 million active members. Facebook has the most monthly active users among these platforms, with 2.910 billion monthly active users. YouTube has 2.562 billion monthly active users, which is second only to Facebook. Following the other platforms, WhatsApp has at least 2 billion monthly active users, Instagram has 1.478 billion monthly active users, and WeChat from China has 1.263 billion monthly active users. (DataReportal, 2021) I think that social media has become an inseparable part of some people. People are now relying on social media more than traditional media. People around me don’t watch the news from newspapers anymore, they chose to read news from social media platforms. So even my father, a 60-year-old man did that too.

Social media is now getting increasingly popular due to internet coverage in Malaysia and internationally. The usage of the internet can bring convenience to humans and bring a lot of good influence to the world.

Reason Why It’s So Popular

As a young adult, I can say that social media applications, especially Instagram is now super popular among my friends’ group. Instagram is a community application software developed by Meta company in October 2010. According to Frommer, (2010), Instagram has features that are similar to other applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. It allows users to share photos, videos, and promote their businesses. But Instagram is slightly different from the others because it will emphasize visuals before the other features.

My friends and I will use Instagram to communicate our daily lives to each other, and we often forward each other posts from other users. Instagram held a large portion of my daily life, especially when the pandemic broke out in Malaysia. We were all bored and can’t meet each other because we were all forced to stay at home, but reading Instagram stories posted by my friends kept me engaged. We're separate, but we still how everyone is doing. For me, scrolling for at least 3 hours on Instagram or Facebook has become like a daily routine.

Instagram, a social media that allows users to have entertainment and has market section.

Besides, a lot of businesses have also switched from having physical stores to having a social media account to market their business. The Covid-19 pandemic may have influenced these changes, but e-commerce already existed before the pandemic. In my opinion, online business and e-commerce platforms helped many small businesses in surviving the pandemic. Because physical stores were forced to close owing to the SOP during the lockdown, companies had no choice but to market their products on social media like Facebook and Instagram. Even though e-commerce might be new for some people, doing these actually did help them to maintain the sales. I often buy K-pop groups’ albums from social media. It allows me to do price comparisons before purchasing since there’re a lot of sellers selling the same thing.

HYBE Label has created an application called Weverse. It was designed to let celebrities communicate with their fans. Of course, I had an account on this app too. My favourite celebrity often does posting or comments on the posts of his fans. Weverse has helped me to release my stress since we can’t travel overseas to watch physical concerts. Weverse is also an e-commerce platform where we can purchase albums, merchandise, and concert tickets.

Weverse application is available on IOS and Android.

As a Media and Creative Studies student, I agree that social media is now playing an important role in media communication. The internet helps the media industry immensely, for example, we can share news on social media rather than on television, radio, or newspaper, and it saves time because news on social media can be spread widely and faster than ever. We can notice that many newspapers publishers have social media accounts, such as China Press, which has accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. What they're doing now is publishing breaking news on these platforms, sometimes even making live broadcasts, which has garnered a large audience. They can also interact with readers through social media. These platforms have a backstage that allows them to obtain and collect data on the type of news that readers prefer to read. Therefore, they can post what the viewers want based on the data, and the number of views will increase.

Facebook account of China Press.

Finally, I believe that social media's tremendous growth is unavoidable, and I'm glad it happened naturally. In conclusion, social media has a positive impact on society and is beneficial to the development of civilisation. We can see that a lot of new occupations occur after the development of social media. As a result, we should take it graciously and optimistically forecast potential changes. As well as make some preparations to respond as quickly as feasible.

References

DataReportal. (2021, October). GLOBAL SOCIAL MEDIA STATS. DataReportal – Global Digital Insights. https://datareportal.com/social-media-users

Dollarhide, M. (2021, August 31). Social Media. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social-media.asp

Frommer, D. (2010, November 2). Here’s How to Use Instagram. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/instagram-2010-11

NEW MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION

Done By: YUKI CHO YUNG KEE

11th March 2022

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