In this blog post, we will look at the history and functions of social media, as well as the positive and negative effects it has on society, with specific examples.
Among the major issues in the IT market in the 21st century, the most notable are the expansion of the smartphone market and the rapid development of social networking services (SNS). Things that were previously thought to be impossible are now easily happening with the help of SNS. SNS can be a channel for tens of thousands of people to empathize and communicate with each other about warm stories, or a place where people can gain strength by collecting petitions from several people when they have a story that they feel is unfair. This shows that social media has a huge impact on modern society. In this article, we will look at the meaning and history of social media, its functions, the negative effects it can have, and the direction in which it is developing.
The dictionary definition of social media is “an online platform that allows users to create and strengthen social relationships through free communication, information sharing, and expanding their network of contacts.” Most of them are based on the Internet (web), and some use simpler platforms such as e-mail or instant messaging. In The Network Nation by S. Roxanne and Murray Turoff, published in 1978, the concept of “each computer is connected by electronic communication means and these computers mediate actual human social interaction and contact” appears, which became the basis for SNS. In fact, there were attempts to form social networks through computers and other communication devices early on, such as Usenet, APANet, LISTSERV, bulletin boards (BBS), and Electronic Information Exchange Service (EIES). Published in 1984, David Andrews’s The IRG Solution was the first to systematically present a rough plan for how the Internet (which was still in its infancy at the time) could shape social media.
Through these efforts, full-fledged internet-based social networking services began to emerge. Examples include The Well (1985), Theglob.com (1994), and GeoCities (1994) in foreign countries, and Naunuri and Chollian in Korea. Most of the early SNS services had features that allowed users to chat in real time and share personal information and personal creations, which could be considered to have the functions of current instant messengers and blogs. In addition, services that connected people using email addresses also appeared, such as Classmates.com, which emphasized the function of finding school alumni, and SixDegrees.com, which had the function of finding people you know across two bridges. Later, driven by the development of programming technology and the expansion of Internet traffic capacity, services larger than the early SNSs began to emerge, and in 2013, the development of Facebook, Cyworld, and Twitter, which are familiar to people today, became a sensation. After smartphones became widely popular around 2010, people were able to use social media on their cell phones, which brought social media closer to people’s daily lives and its influence is growing day by day.
Social media has various functions, but the most important of these is the function of strengthening connections. Most social media can be used to strengthen relationships between people who already know each other offline and to meet new people online. It can be a way to contact someone you have known for a long time but have not been able to ask how they are doing, or a way to easily contact new people with similar interests. Ironically, this strengthening of the network is achieved by creating fences. According to Boyd and Ellison’s article “Why Youth Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life” (2007), most SNSs used by teenagers have the function of classifying users based on personal information and provide the function of creating small online societies by allowing users to form friendships with each other. When water and oil are mixed together in a container of a suitable size, they do not mix with each other, but rather form groups of droplets, with water forming groups of water droplets and oil forming groups of oil droplets. On social media, people with similar interests, the same alma mater, and the same hometown form small networks (or small societies). The early model of Facebook, the most widely used social media in Korea, was also a closed community through internal email address verification among Harvard students. Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard student at the time, slightly modified it and created the current Facebook. The difference from the original model was that it did not limit the scope of the site to Harvard graduates, but allowed them to form their own networks by managing their own friend lists. This autonomy in network formation helped users to conveniently and deeply expand their networks, and thanks to this, Facebook has become the undisputed No. 1 social media platform.
In addition to strengthening connections, social media also performs a number of other important functions. It can be used to maximize efficiency in a variety of fields, including corporate marketing, social commerce, public sector use, and gaming. There are already many successful examples of domestic and foreign companies marketing through Facebook and Cyworld, and the public is familiar with this. Conventional advertising was a simple method of giving frequent exposure on web pages. Unlike this, advertising using social media allows users to directly access the Facebook page or Cyworld mini homepage that represents the company, express their opinions on the advertisement, and actively participate in the event, which can leave a stronger impression on consumers than the conventional method. Hyundai Card’s Stevie Wonder Super Concert promotion and Kyobo Bookstore’s review platform built using social media are examples of successful corporate marketing. Social commerce, which offers steep discounts on products when a certain number of them are sold, has been popular in other countries for a long time, and in 2010, social commerce sites such as Coupang and Tmon emerged in Korea with great popularity. At one time, it seemed to be withering away, but recently, with the launch of the “Wonder Cube” app on Tripass, it presented a new model combining social media and social commerce, and this is emerging as a new area of interest and is gathering expectations. It is also common to see public interest campaigns or the promotion of a good image of the relevant organization through social media, and the number of social games based on web social media is also increasing. In particular, thanks to the expansion of the smartphone market, numerous social games have become popular with the public, starting with the explosive popularity of Anipang, which is based on KakaoTalk.
As social media is deeply embedded in the daily lives of the public, its dysfunctionality is also becoming more prominent. Among them, the most serious problem that has emerged is the issue of privacy. On social media, information is exposed to acquaintances and strangers at the same time, so even trivial things that friends should know about can be leaked, and in serious cases, criminals can steal personal information such as residence and resident registration numbers for various purposes (not only by exposure but also by hacking). In fact, on July 26, 2011, in South Korea, about 35 million personal information stored in the then-popular social network site Cyworld was hacked, which became a big issue and is still being tried in court. Meanwhile, in other countries, a social network site called Quechup collected member email addresses and used them to send spam, which caused a big controversy. When personal information is entrusted to SNS sites like this, there is a risk that one’s information will be exposed, but the primary problem is that most SNS users are not aware of this fact, and a more serious problem is that there is no way to fundamentally prevent skilled hackers from stealing personal information. Foreign social networking sites such as MySpace and NetLog work with public law enforcement agencies to prepare for personal information leaks, but this is only to facilitate the cleanup after an incident, and it is difficult to fundamentally prevent hacking. In addition, there is an ongoing debate about whether it is right to collect data on people’s behavior patterns from social media sites without permission to obtain data for social science research, and the issue of personal information (privacy) leakage caused by social media is constantly emerging.
In addition, studies on the psychological effects of social media on users have found its negative effects. John T. Cacioppo, an American psychologist at the University of Chicago, has argued that social media relationships are fundamentally virtual, which ultimately makes people feel more disconnected. An article about this was published in Newsweek. According to the American Psychological Association’s report “Social Networking’s Good and Bad Impacts on Kids,” released in September 2011, frequent exposure to social media makes it easier for teenagers to feel negative emotions such as depression and anger. As the basis of human relationships on social media is a virtual space, there is a side effect of feeling lonely and depressed even while being in contact with many people.
Due to its convenience and influence, social media has already become an indispensable part of modern people’s daily lives. Despite the above-mentioned negative effects, social media continues to evolve as we seek solutions. In particular, the recent development of social media is closely related to the smartphone revolution. Conventional mobile phones were used by acquaintances to simply send and receive text messages or make phone calls, but with the smartphone revolution, it became possible to access the Internet more reliably and quickly at lower rates than before. This naturally led to the use of social media on smartphones, and not only did social media become more commonplace, but the functions of social media and mobile phones became integrated. KakaoTalk, which was a messenger program, is gradually incorporating social network service features, while Facebook, on the other hand, has released the Facebook Messenger app, which only has messenger features. In addition, apps that make better use of the functions of mobile phones through social networking services have also been released. One such app is an app that displays friends’ birthdays on the mobile phone’s calendar by inputting them from the Facebook database. In other words, smartphones are the most important keyword in determining the direction of the development of social media. In fact, Facebook, which made it possible to enjoy social media that was previously done on computers on mobile devices, has an overwhelming market share compared to Cyworld, which did not. From now on, each social media will continue to develop in line with changes such as the smartphone revolution.
Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which states that individuals with various traits are produced, but only the traits of the individuals that best fit the situation are passed on to future generations, and evolution occurs, is a good model to explain the creation and disappearance of modern social media. In the modern era, numerous SNSs with various characteristics have emerged, but as can be seen from the precedents of Cyworld and Facebook, SNSs that have not been able to change appropriately will eventually become SNSs that are used less and become “SNSs that were used a lot before,” while SNSs that have changed appropriately will steadily dominate the SNS market.
Therefore, when considering the direction of development of social media, the ability to flexibly respond to user needs and social changes is an important factor, not just the addition of simple features or changes in design. In addition, efforts are needed to maximize the positive aspects of social media and minimize the negative aspects. To do so, user education, awareness improvement, and technical improvements must be continuously carried out. We must all work together to ensure that social media continues to have a positive impact on our daily lives and society.
