The Future in Social Media: 2018 and Beyond

As a generation, we all can come to realize that the 21st century is evolved around social media interaction. But we also should come to think to ourselves this: where will social media heading in the future? Is the use of social media gonna increase rapidly or decrease? Perhaps people might be willing to give it all up and go back to face-to-face interactions. In my opinion, life is better in a social aspect when communicating and interacting with others in person. The reason as to why I think this is because you feel like you are really involved with the person's well being just because you are in their physical presence. At times, interactions with people in person can cause an intimate relationships and long-lasting friendships. Who knows? Maybe somehow society can reduce the obsession over the engagement in social media platforms and take a step out in the real world to what is really surrounding them.

In this blog, I will be discussing the few factors we can consider that can impact the future of social media. The one factor is called "hyper-personalization". This is the act of people who favor specific posts from the social media platform that they engage in. For example, some people would scroll down their page and actively unfollow people and organizations that do not share information they don't find useful or entertaining. This gets some people aggravated because they are not entirely getting what they want. Therefore, people might end up just giving up on social media usage. Social media users tend to be picky with looking for posts that fit their criteria. According to Serenity Gibbons, a guest writer for Entrepreneur, says that "humans love information that reinforces personal beliefs, and have an aversion to information that challenges preexisting notions." This may seem complex, and as for me at least, it most certainly was. However, if you take a closer look and you break down the point she is trying to make, it begins to make sense about people's perspective and approach towards social media platform posts. The people who use social media, especially Facebook, get easily attached to posts that relate to their personal life and their foundation beliefs.

The other factor is a demand for less censorship and even more freedom. "Social media has empowered individuals to share their thoughts and ideas with the tap of a screen." says Gibbons. People are at the point when they feel entitled to share anything that is on their mind and share an unlimited amount of content that they think might interest others. Blogs are not even necessary to create anymore. Gather an audience and constantly fill it with current information. You may simply share events going on in your life to others by simply one click. Although in other governments in other countries such as Bangladesh, China, and Egypt, the freedom to post anything on social media is being reduced. The nation under those countries merely refuse to comply. In conclusion, there are chances that social media usage may reduce in the future due to those actions that affect the social media world.