Social Media and the User

Media changes the user. This is so true when it comes to social media such as twitter, online video games, chat rooms.. but especially in the world of Facebook. According to Coleman, “Media use changes the user. With each shift in automation, simulation, and transmission, we discover not only new technologies but also new facets of ourselves.” (140) These new medias allow us to become someone different then what we are in real life, and in Coleman’s words, they allow the user “to be cooler than in life” (pg.125). Facebook is a place where you can connect with friends and share photos, status updates, and showcase what’s going on in your life. The problem is that Facebook has created an alternate reality for some in which they get to be viewed by others how they want to be perceived. Using specific photos, liking specific things can give the persona of really what ever the user wants. Some use it for just keeping in touch with friends, but others, Facebook is more then that, its their life, and it allows unsocial behavior to thrive where you may have friends in which you have never met in reality. This poses the question to me, can you truly have a friendship with someone in which you have never met before? Facebook has allowed this from when it went from just only college student users to global users of all ages. Facebook has become a social necessity now in our daily lives. Now that people have become so dependent on social media like Facebook, could our society ever go back to an age before without it?