I have a friend who we call a “boomer” because she does not get social media or Pop Culture. She only uses YouTube and Instagram and my attempt to move her into TikTok was barely successful. She uses social media like a mom does, which is one of the reasons we love to call her “Mama”
I wrote this social media guide for people like her, because in this day and age it has become an essential tool in life, and this is how you can utilize it.
So what exactly is social media? To understand it better let’s break it down in two words.
Social - Communicating and interacting with other people to share and receive information.
Media - The way you communicate with other people.
From these two words we can make up the definition of social media, which is an online tool that allows people to share and consume information.
There are tons of different social media sites out there, way beyond just Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. These social media sites have a lot of common features that would classify them as such. These features include but are not limited to:
User Accounts - A lot of social media sites allow users to create their own user accounts. It is simply just an account that you log into to be able to use that application. TikTok has the ability to browse the application without an account, but you have to have an account to post any content.
Profile Pages - A profile page is a page that allows users to share information about the user whether it’s a profile picture, a header, bio or even highlights.
Friends, Followers and Groups - The way you interact with people. Some applications like Snapchat differentiate between a follower and a friend, and also creates a lot of group options like a group chat and private stories.
Newsfeed - Where you get real time information from users.
Notifications - How the app notifies users of information of their choosing.
Posting - Allowing users to post any type of information or media whether it’s a piece of text, photo, video or even a link.
Likes and comment sections - The two most common ways to interact with a social media post. Other interactions include reactions and reposting.
Reviews, rating and voting - Other than liking and commenting, a lot of social media sites like Good Reads (a reading social media site) allows users to review and rate books and the option to create polls that friends and followers can vote on.
Social Media isn’t just Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. These are just the most popular. The Social Networking category of the App Store has over hundreds of different social media apps. Some of those, I never even realized were considered social media. These social media apps revolutionized the way we humans interact with each other and share information and they are always developing.
I wonder how we would share information and interact with each other 50 years from now.