Who is not familiar with the word social media today? If we talk about its literal meaning, then it means social communication medium. If we talk about the scenario of about 2 decades ago, then at that time people had limited resources to convey their feelings to each other. The best and cheapest resource used to be letters.
By the mid-1990s, apart from Doordarshan, a few selected private TV channels had come into the entertainment fold; for music lovers, audio cassettes had been replaced by compact discs; telephones were used to talk and express emotions Was the only powerful medium.
Computers and the Internet had started slowly by this time. Letters had been replaced by Rediff and Yahoo Mail. People were now learning to use Yahoo Messenger and Orkut to communicate. Compact Discs were replaced by DVDs and televisions were replaced by LCDs. By then a flood of private TV channels had started coming.
The mobile era started in the early 2000s and it developed new dimensions of communication for people, which started with pagers and SMS. Now people could write small messages and send them to each other, that too in less than a second.
Multimedia phones replaced keypad mobile phones. In this, users could listen to songs, watch videos, and send mail, record audio and video. At the beginning of 2010, there was a lot of progress in the means of entertainment, cinemas transformed into Cineplexes and multiplexes, LCDs were replaced by LEDs, multimedia phones were replaced by smart mobile phones, now people could also do live video calling, many new applications. The most liked resource among them is WhatsApp and Facebook which has brought a new revolution in the social media world.
Due to this, people's social circle also increased, time was saved, and people started staying updated, after this, new applications started coming for every field. Nowadays, the main preferred apps in social media platforms are Instagram, Twitter Linked In and YouTube. YouTube channels are a powerful medium of learning and teaching today.
Like always, one thing of science seems to be true even today that science is both a boon and a curse. Now we have to understand whether we have to use so many applications of social media for our benefit or harm.
Author:
Prof. Manish Singhal
Head, MCA & IT
NIIST, Bhopal (M.P)
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