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Mohammad Alqarawi
Kimberly Lewis
Writing 113A
December 11th 2015.
Social Medias Evolution and Face to Face Interactions
There is more than what meets the eye when it comes to social media. It is quite hard to
determine whether social media is benefiting our society, or working toward its destruction. I,
for one, never found myself adhered to social media in general. However, this is not to say that I
take it for granted, far from it. Social media, without a doubt, holds a very strong and influential
power on the majority of age groups, from first graders, to senior citizens. I will be briefly
touching on the inception of social media, how it has slowly evolved and started to get attention
from users, then its major influence on face to face interactions under the use of mobile
applications such as Snapchat, twitter, and Instagram.
During the early 70s, a group of computer enthusiasts developed a system that they
called a Community Memory for the purpose of sharing information between both the
institutions and the public via public servers. It did not last more than a couple of years due to
high maintenance, and it did not have any major impact of society. However, it did lay the egg
that was hatched later by the developers of the BBS (Bulletin Board Systems). The BBS was
basically the same concept as the CM, but with better software development, and soon had
better hardware support as technology advanced with the years. Better technology contributed in
lowering prices which ultimately led to better accessibility by the public. That was the case with
BBS until the early 90s, which marked the revolutionizing of the internet and the introduction of
mIRC. Socializing through the internet had reached new levels of innovation and it was very

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easy and practical to participate within this chatting platform. It also brought some major
primary concerns regarding how it was interfering with face to face socialization, but only
slightly as it required a working station. However, the introduction of mIRC had laid the
infrastructure for a future of portable social media thanks to its technology.
In the dawn of the 21st century, a lot had happened in the field of social media. Unlike the
past where it was a luxury item, today it is almost a necessity for the grand majority of the new
world citizens and all those who can afford it. This was due to several reasons but primarily in
results of the technological advancements in hardware developments. Faster processing speeds,
for example, made it possible to pack and unpack large amounts of data in very short times, as
well as bigger RAMs for higher cache memory. Also, minimizing production costs, which led to
even more lower retail prices. Most importantly, the size reduction of hardware, which paved the
way to go mobile. This was by far the most important part of the new age of social media
because this had opened up the gates for software developers to come up with mobile
applications such as Snapchat, twitter, and Instagram, the most popular social media applications
of today. That being said, having access to these applications via mobile technology is regarded
to be the fundamental reason as of why social media is playing a huge role in affecting face to
face interactions today. This implication is based on the fact that with a mobile device, such as
the smart phone, people have access to these applications twenty-four hours a day, seven days a
week and this is the crux of it.
First of all, what are those apps? And why are they so popular to the point that they are
affecting our social interactions? The answer is simple, they provided what was missing for a
large number of people, which was the self-esteem and confidence that was necessary for them
to socialize. There are people who lack the ability to establish a real life relationship with others

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and communicate face to face. Those people have found social media apps and networks to be
the perfect solution for their problem. Anti-socials were, and still are considered to be a group of
people with a very intricate psychological case to solve among all societies and in all
demographics. A lot of people hold interest in socializing, but unfortunately, they lack the ability
to do so as they did not have the proper training or experience in their becoming of a social
human being; therefore, they resort to socializing using a digital faade instead of overcoming
their social anxiety. Technology made socializing easy and fun, and the use of social media had
grown out of control thanks to that, and it found its way to almost everyone. In the article Social
Anxiety in the Age of social media Guillermo Farfan said The advent of the Internet has
changed the way individuals and groups of individuals interact with one another and the world.
In fact, an entire generation has been brought up with the idea that socializing includes an
online component (Guillermo Farfan). This might sound as a helpful element to the current
situation of those who find difficulties to initiate a face to face social interaction, but there is also
a very dark side to it. Some people are losing their ability to conduct a social interaction due to
their lack of practicing it. In a way, people are starting to get into awkward situations where they
do not know how to act accordingly. For example, when two people meet in the street, before the
outbreak of social media, they used to stop, say hello, and spend a few minutes talking and
catching up. However, now is rarely the case as they could stop and say hello and end up staring
at each other, not knowing how to interact properly. This is because some people forgot how to.
Social media is creating a void with these apps, which they are all slowly leading society toward
a social suicide.
Let us take a closer look at these apps and see how far they are interfering with our daily
socialization. Instagram, for example, is an app that revolves around taking and sharing photos

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and videos with ones followers or to the public, and the ability to put comments as well.
Instagram has proved to be useful in many ways, for what it is worth, some people reported how
fun it is watching photos of cheesecakes, some random person who just bought a new bike and
shared some picture and videos, a girl putting makeup on and so on. In the article "Snapchat vs.
Instagram: Which Should You Use?" a statistic published by Ana Gotter says 300 million
monthly active users, and 75 million daily users, 70 million photos posted daily (Ana Gotter).
That is a lot of people on Instagram sharing photos every day, and based on the same source, the
percentage of those users are in the age group from 16 to 34. It also suggested that over 70% of
college users use Instagram. The majority of those users are strongly engaged in the app that
occasionally they would bump into each other while walking in the campus. I remember when I
first got into college back in 2001, me and my friends had an amazing time socializing together.
We knew how to make funny jokes with our peers. Now if someone makes a joke, everyone is
awkwardly staring at him because he is probably not in their friends list. For us, that was every
day waking up, going to school to meet our friends, and most importantly, make even more
friends so we can do what we do even more often. School was not about learning academic stuff,
but also how to become an adult member of a society. Unfortunately, I can no longer see this
today as everyone is busy catching up to what they missed on Instagram during class.
Then we have Snapchat. Some people like to compare it with Instagram, where users can
shoot and record anything using their cell phones, except in the case of Snapchat, a user can only
record videos for up to 10 seconds and share it to their circles of friends. They can also share
photos that will last for10 seconds as well. Then the content will automatically be deleted and
gone forever. This idea of spontaneity was very appealing to a lot of people, and thus, Snapchat
became very popular and addictive due to that element of suspense. Snapchat interferes with face

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to face social interaction greatly as those who use the application struggle to disengage
themselves from it. Sometimes it gets very difficult to maintain a conversation with someone
who is engaged in Snapchat and that is for the following reason: Snapchat is exploiting sexuality
and that became a trend, especially among the younger community. There have been thousands
of reports where teenagers being exposed naked after recording themselves to their close friends,
by their friends, ironically. Parents are losing their minds in the process. An article in forbs
website "What Is Snapchat and Why Do Kids Love It and Parents Fear It by Larry Magid
saying to parents My advice for parents is to talk with your kids about Snapchat, Instagram and
other photo-sharing apps. Dont lecture them, dont panic and dont expect the worst. Just ask
them if they use these apps and what theyre doing with them. Chances are your kid already
knows not to do anything really stupid, but it never hurts to calmly impart a little adult wisdom
(Lary Magid). All this suspense in Snapchat is contributing toward the destruction of face to face
interaction by making digital interaction far more interesting and appealing by adding sexuality
in it. It is understood that this was not the intent of Snapchat, but that is how it is being used
today for the most part.
Finally, we have twitter, which is the oldest application among the three and proved its
efficacy in the field of communication as it was very simple and straight forward. In fact, when
twitter was first introduced, it was being advertised as the SMS (Short Messaging Service) of
the internet by its founders. That is true because in twitter, users can only write up to 140 letters.
This has been proven to be very successful as people usually do not feel like reading long entries,
instead, a short conclusion is considered to be enough. However, twitters simplicity made it
extremely addicting to the point where users cannot detach themselves from it. They get to know
what is going on with the people they are following very fast and efficiently. They just keep on

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reading and not paying attention to anything else. This is also because of the fact that a twitter
user can very much follow any person they wish to follow, such as celebrities for example. What
did they do? What are they doing now? What are they planning on doing in the near future?
Catching up with their favorite people became as close as being a never ending adventure, which
they love to do so much. The addiction can clearly be observed by anyone who attempts to have
a conventional social interaction with someone who is engaged in twitter. They can literally
spend the entire day reading and exploring twitter if left alone.
With all what have been said, social media has without a doubt, paved the ways of the
future in the field of information exchange. There is no denying that contemporary social media
had revolutionized the process of sharing and exchanging information from one point to another.
As well as the ability to advertise through Instagram for example, whether it is a product or an
event, with high efficiency based on likes and search histories. Most importantly, helped those
who had difficulties socializing face to face with a solution that works. Unfortunately, nothing
comes with only pros and no cons. Social media apps such as Snapchat, twitter, and Instagram,
had proven to be extremely addictive on a very large scale for the daily users where they have
lost their senses toward traditional socializing. Many people suffer great addiction and a very
short attention span toward anything other than their social media profiles. This has ultimately
helped in the creation of the void between the member of society by ruining face to face
interactions that we all should acknowledge its existence.

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Works Cited
Gotter, Ana. "Snapchat vs. Instagram: Which Should You Use?" AdEspresso. N.p., 05 Aug. 2015.
Web. 27 Nov. 2015.
Farfan, Guillermo. "Social Anxiety in the Age of Social Networks." Association for
Psychological Science RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2015. web
Magid, Larry. "What Is Snapchat and Why Do Kids Love It and Parents Fear It? (Updated)."
Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 1 May 2013. Web. 27 Nov. 2015. web