A Brief Summary Of Social Media

In a time when society is more egocentric than ever, people must resist or conform to a form of life that revolves strongly around knowing what everybody is doing all the time through social media platforms. Ms. Ham and Mr. Standage focus on how trends draw people out of their normal social interactions and into a world that seemingly revolves around themselves (We Shall Overshare, Mary Ham 280). Their focus upon the false sense of attention that people get from sharing about themselves shows how the audience in each article should be able to relate to this kind of situation. The world that people live in today is full of self-centered beings that seek only to grab attention for themselves and distancing themselves from their friends and family …show more content…
Ham’s audience is aimed towards people of younger generations who have or will grow up in the age of online social mediums and within the article she also speaks with the lingo of people who know much about the internet; describing the traversing of social channels as a game of “public Frogger” (Ham 282). Though the game is older than its social channels, many people would know what Ham was talking about if such a question was posed. To follow up on Ham’s speech of how the some social mediums can be too dangerous for some people to continue using them, Standage supports the dangerous side of social mediums stating that “media-platforms do pose some danger to the young” (Standage). Standage does have his target audience based towards those old enough to understand and comprehend the world events going on around them rather than younger people who don’t pay as much attention to things going on in the world. Standage knows that the concern for a lot of people is that social media platforms may be barriers that are only hurting the users and since younger people are beginning to use them each and every day, it would make sense that some concern would be had to overusing the social media platforms (Standage). However, Ham finds that to cure the problem of the social medium “barrier” …show more content…
As Standage reassures the reader: “their merits outweigh their drawbacks” (Standage). Both younger and older generations have different reasons for using social media platforms and the simplicity of how they work will only allow for more people to begin using these platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) in the years to come. The biggest problem that will still be around is the fact that the users of social media platforms will keep the egotistic idea that the medium revolves around them when it really doesn’t after being re-evaluated. Social mediums will always be around whether it be for spreading knowledge or just simply wasting time instead of doing something more productive but the fact of the matter is that from both Ham and Standage’s articles, social mediums are only what people make them out to be from how they use Facebook or Twitter. Social mediums might be described as the bane of someone’s existence but it only exists in this form because they allowed the social medium to become such a thing in their mind and life. Ham states that she has a daily routine thanks to her frequent use of social media but this has not become a serious problem for her and doesn’t mean that it will be for other people (Ham). Though social