At their humble genesis, apps like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, were all once just photo sharing and text messaging apps, but now, their utilization has evolved into something more.
Social media has been a crucial element in society's evolution over the last two decades. While a lot of praise can be attributed to these digital platforms, and their relevance to social, cultural and political advancement, certain criticisms of social media remain valid as we speak today. Nonetheless, every day, enlightened individuals continue to call out these crude and backwards models that still manage to thrive across the timelines; Whether it is regarding beauty, lifestyle, fashion, or politics,
It is 2022, and everyone is intentional about what they create and consume, in alignment with an agenda or another, whether they realize it or not. However, this construct was a ripple effect of a famous movement back in 2018 themed as “Make Instagram casual again”. This was after Instagram shifted from an app that centred on capturing casual moments in people's lives in the mid-2010s to becoming a hub for aesthetic pleasing grids, and a $13.8billion pot for a booming influencer market as of 2021. To maintain balance within its user community, and limit the impacts of influencer culture, certain adjustments had to be executed. For example, Instagram took down the visibility of the number of likes, YouTube removed the visibility of the dislike count and other changes that would make it easy so the apps could still seem more casual for a certain demographic of internet users who preferred it so for certain reasons.
Yet, despite the modifications made by these platforms, it seems highly unlikely that we will ever return to that era in which what most users wanted to do was send a text, or share a moment with their minimal sum of followers.
Back in the early 2010s, Social media used to be casual, but this is 2022. The fast-paced evolution has led to the derogation of this casual construct, reshaped social media which have become so fundamentally crucial to collective existence especially considering the enormous financial potential for creators is on the rise. Everybody wants a slice of the cake. Most users creating a new Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter account, do so to create awareness for their businesses, activism on socio-political issues such as racial prejudice, climate change, pride, mental health and more. Other creators take to social media just for the liberty to express themselves, their talent in a desire to make it in the music or film industries. And there is another set of users who use social media as a means to escape reality.
At their humble genesis, apps like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, were all once just photo sharing and text messaging apps, but now, the use of these apps has evolved into so much more.
In the long run? Will it be for the greater good? Time will tell.
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