SHORT DESCRIPTION:

Social media is a large part of everyday life for most people, and it is often used as a means for staying in contact over long-distances with friends and family. However, social media has been around for only a couple of decades at most. Several different technologies have been used throughout the past to communicate over long distances. This video is a quick overview of that history and how technological advancements have affected long-distance communication.


LONG DESCRIPTION:

Social media plays such a large role in today’s society. From Facebook, to Instagram, to Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and more, it seems we are always connected: to our friends and family, to strangers, and to celebrities and brands. Many people use social media to stay in touch with loved ones by sharing photos, videos, and messages with them online when they can’t be together in person. It is strange to imagine life without social media, or even the Internet. However, the Internet didn’t become widespread until about two decades ago, and social media sites like the ones that exist today didn’t start to emerge until the early-to-mid 2000s.

Prior to the social media, blogging, the World Wide Web, the Internet, and e-mail, staying connected with people elsewhere in the world was much more difficult. For many, many years, prior to the invention of the telegraph, the only way to communicate over long distances was by sending letters (or “snail mail,” as it is often referred to today). If you wanted to communicate with someone, it could take weeks, or at least several days, as technology became more advanced and mail could travel by train, plane, or automobile, rather than by a carriage or horse. Eventually, the telegraph shortened that length of time even more, but telegrams were very brief messages, so they did not provide the same opportunities to express oneself as handwritten letters did. Then came the telephone, which allowed people to talk to one another across long distances and communicate instantaneously. However, if both people were not available to talk at the same time, telephone communication didn’t work very well. When e-mail was invented, that solved the problem of convenience.

It wasn’t until social media that it was able to truly share your life and memories with someone over a long distance. With social media, you can share photos, videos, and post thoughts and opinions, and you get to interact with people elsewhere in the world so much more than was ever possible without social media. So many people can get caught up in social media, and there are definitely negative sides to spending so much time online and in the digital world. However, I hope this video will encourage viewers to be grateful for the connections that social media creates and sustains.

Video By: Megan Sullivan

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