The Quirks of Online Communication - Having Social Media Friends

We live in an era when most of the world is somehow connected to social media platforms. Almost 50% of the World's population is using social media (according to Emarsys, 2019). It is very hard to believe, but only a decade ago social media was not that important to us as it is right now. I remember times, when I signed up to Facebook back in 2007 but did not see any point in it until more and more social platforms appeared. Fast forward to 2015, and social media conquered the modern lifestyle, which means the way of communication that was familiar to us has permanently changed. Time passes, more and more users jump in to social media in younger ages and become addicted to it. Millennials are the generation with the highest daily usage of social media, for them social media is the way of communication and even expressing feelings.


How much time do people spend on Social Media?

The time spent on Social Media platforms is increasing everyday. There are more and more social media platforms appearing day by day and this results in people trying new them. For the passed 7 years time which we were spending in social medias has increased from 90 minutes to 153 minutes per day and soon we will be witnessing more than 3 hours social media every single day.

Of course every country's social media usage time is different and it has a lot to do with country's economy, technology, culture and more! But South America is the continent where these
 numbers are the highest - 209 minutes of social media per day. Here are list of continents with their social media time usage (Source: eMarketer):

1. South America - 209 minutes
2. Africa - 190 minutes
3. Asia - 136 minutes
4. North America - 126 minutes
5. Europe - 113 minutes

Surprisingly we live in a continent where people do not spend their major spare time in social medias. Africa and South America is the place where people appear to be most addicted to social media platforms.

Benefits of Social Media friends

Yes it is real and happening, finding friends and even new acquaintances are very easy in social media platforms. To be honest this was the way how my father and step mother met each other 14 years ago. They met using social media platform called 'Camfrog' back then it was very popular platform among people with hearing disabilities.

In social media you can make new friends and share information, ideas, stories and even emotions with them. This is same when it comes to real life friendships but only it takes place digitally rather than in person.

How Social Media changed the way we communicate? 

Couple decades ago one-to-many communication channels were newspapers but now it is replaced with social media. Social media is a place where everyday we see new influencers that deliver the message the same way but using social media accounts on the internet.

Immidiate access to any information is pretty easy thanks to the internet and social media platforms. We all know that major traditional media channels do not deliver the right information and even violate the freedom of information. Due to all the negative and false information that was ever made by media channels people moved to social media to find right information and even share their point of view with wider audience.


Remember the human

'Remember the human' was one of the commandments by virginia shea and I liked it the most among all the others because it is really important rule of netiquette. There are billions of users in social media platforms and it is really hard to remember any profile.