Research Analysis : Twitter And Its Impact On The 21st Century

“People can take their time when posting information about themselves, carefully selecting what aspects they would like to emphasize (Gonzales 80).” By controlling what information and self-attributes to share with the online world, an individual may present an idealized version of self that would not align with societal perceptions in the face-to-face interactions. Furthermore, Gonzales notes that recent research in computer-mediated communications suggests that online self-presentations can alter self-perceptions (80). As Orenstein says, “I tweet, therefore I am.” The online presentations of self can become the reality, or idealized reality, of the

Twitter has a wide variety of young users who are often eager many would say over-eager to share information about their personal lives. And as is the case with all social media, Twitter is operating in a 'wild, wild west' of a lack of legal restrictions. Despite concerns over alienating users, the desire to make what is now a relatively old and established site more profitable (perhaps in answer to the shaky performance of Facebook's public offering) has apparently won out. Recently, "in a move that has sparked privacy concerns among social media users,

Fr. Nicolas has stated that the “globalization of superficiality” refers to the fact that we have more information than ever, but we have less ability to think, to reflect, and to digest the information we have acquired. As social media has unearthed its profound, and what seems to be, vital place in our global community, instant communication techniques have become pervasive, which in turn, have caused many public opinions to conclude that social media discourages deep reflection and engagement. This might be true in some cases; however, social media serves many different opportunities for connectivity and community, business and marketing, or even entertainment and media coverage. People take to Twitter and other forms of social media to simply discuss what is going on in the world or in their environments. It is not a place where many people will likely be comfortable speaking on such deep issues of love or the human mind. Our thought process with social media is just that, social. It is ideal for meeting new people or discovering and sharing the latest story. I believe from there that deeper reflection and thought can originate.

Moving forward, social media has been a major convenience and reward to virtually everyone. On an individual basis, social media allows friends and family both near and far to communicate with one another. Also, businesses are flourishing through the use of social media. Advertising has never been easier. Horn (2013) states, “Our profession, unlike any time before, is demanding we become social media (…) experts” (1). Horn (2013) also states, “More than half of reporters (55 percent) use Twitter and Facebook to source stories” (1). Social media has greatly benefited business life and personal life.

Twitter is the world’s number one go-to social media platform and, even though it is just words on a screen, it has the power to change lives for better or for worse. This social media platform is a powerful tool when someone knows how to use it correctly, but powerful tools can just as easily be misused. Mona Eltahawy’s primary theme in her essay “Twitterholics Anonymous” is that Twitter has both positive and negative effects on anyone who uses or follows the social media platform. “Twitter connects me to everything I care about and Twitter is ruining my life.” Just as this platform can connect people across the world, Eltahawy clearly demonstrates the toll it can take on one’s body and mind. The author of “Twitterholics Anonymous” brings up a unique conversation about Twitter’s effects on the world’s population that could inadvertently revolutionize how the world views and uses social media.

Since the invention of the Internet, people have become indulged with its copious functions, from making advanced programs to learning how to do new projects to social media. Social media has evolved over the years, from Friendster to Myspace to Facebook, since the late 1990s, and people have incorporated it into their lives. It is the modern way for people to connect and communicate with anyone and everyone across the globe. Plus, social media is everywhere; people utilize it when they are on the bus, at the checkout line, and even when they are using the restroom. In Peggy Orenstein’s “The Way We Live Now: I Tweet, Therefore I Am,” she propounds that social media has altered society. Social media has changed society’s priorities, characteristics, and mentality.

Peggy Orenstein in the article “I Tweet, Therefore I Am” (2010), featured in the New York Times asserts that people should not tweet for their followers but tweet for themselves; that we should not analyze our everyday actions due to how we would want our lives to be perceived by others. Peggy Orenstein supports her argument with rhetorical questions, statistics, and personal experiences. Her purpose was to ultimately convince the readers to think less about what your social media followers want to hear, and more about what you want to say. Orenstein writes in an empathetic tone most likely intended for people like herself, people who are realizing how social can make differentiating your person and persona difficult; however, it also reaches

In the article “I Tweet, Therefore I Am,” author Peggy Orenstein criticizes the problems associated to the distractions of social media sites such as Twitter. The author introduces her article by describing her relaxing Sunday morning with her daughter. The author then quickly recounts her sense of urge to compress her beautiful day into a tweet, acknowledging that her “consciousness had spin off and was observing the scene from the outside… [her] perfect oppurtunity to tweet.” Living in a fast-paced world like today, many people can agree that what we decide to share is ultimately determined by our fantasies of what we think people should see, know and hear for the

Relevance to audience: As users of social media you may not think that it can have a bad effect on your life or the lives of those around you. After listening to what I have to say today, will give you a new perspective on social media and the huge control that it can have peoples’ lives.

Facebook and Twitter have become one of the biggest social media use by Americans. Through Facebook people can share their life experience. In reality life experiences are lost through Facebook because the person posting is not living the experience with his or her friends. Twitter is use to post little messages called tweets that can only be up to 140 letters. Tweets express how someone feels or what they are doing. Twitter

Most people are uptight about the likes and comments they receive on social media websites, Carr formally proclaims. All of the popular websites use this method to receive more people active on them. Doing this urges people to share personal details about their life. “...people share four times as much information about themselves when they converse through computers as when they talk in person” (Carr 3). It is not necessary for people to share an extreme amount of details about their lives, but they still do.

These days it seems that the Internet, a post-modern medium, something so complex and vital to our society as being reduce to a mere antiquity of personal feuds and interactive relationships (or at least the satisfaction of what seems like a relationship) between people. The rise of social media applications like Twitter and Facebook allows people to voice their opinions to wider audience, creating a pluralist, postmodern medium in which questions raised about the impact of mediated relationships have surely increased. What is particularly interesting about Twitter (and to a lesser extent Facebook) is the newfound proximity we ‘normal people’ have to modern

Walk into a library, you have a computer, you are most likely carrying a phone, at home, you most likely have a computer, laptop, tablet, or even all three. This shows that we have social media access at the tip of our fingers, making it so easy to open up the site or app and just type out a phrase or paragraph, letting hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions, of people know what you think. Back then, it was harder to let the nation know what you were thinking, and it took even take months before everyone knew, versus today, where the nation might know by the end of the day, and it’s because of this that companies regulate what their users are posting, attempting at keeping the online world free from threats, hate, harmful words, and more. Rutenberg quotes Jeffrey Goldberg as he says, “At a certain point I’d rather take myself off the platform where speech has become so become so offensive than advocate for the suppression of that speech” (2). Twitter also said that “everyone on Twitter should feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs, but behavior that harasses, intimidates or uses fear to silence another person’s voice should have no place on our platform” (Rutenberg 2).

The world has never before been connected as much as it is today. One’s ability to communicate through various mediums is rapidly advancing, and this is much thanks to social media.

The term ‘social media’ has become a broad-term to describe a large number of online systems that serve as a platform for the generation, and distribution of user-generated content. Social media creates a virtual social space, where a large number of users come together and interact with one another. These interactions can be either structured, such as responses that are moderated on blogs, semi-structured, such as a discussion between an extended network on Facebook, or unstructured, such as the anarchial functioning of Twitter.