How Social Media Shapes People’s Lives

Social media walks into our lives silently when we pick up our smart phones to chat in Facebook, to watch videos in YouTube and to check the latest news on CNN, Yahoo! or Google News…. From the scenes depict above, we can notice that social media develops rapidly and reshapes our lives in many ways in recent years. Here are some areas that social media shapes people’s lives.

First, social media shapes people’s ways to meet and communicate with other people. Without the development of social media, people often use SMS, telephone or talk face to face in order to reach each other. Nowadays, more people choose social media like Facebook or Twitter as a more convenient way to maintain relationships. Almost everyone around us has a social network account. They post their recent, read others recent or do some short chats with each other in social network at anytime. According to data from eMarketer which is a market research company, “nearly one in four people worldwide will use social networks in 2013. The number of social network users around the world will rise from 1.47 billion in 2012 to 1.73 billion this year, an 18% increase. By 2017, the global social network audience will total 2.55 billion.” (EMarketer 2013) Such huge data did prove that social media shape people’s custom to keep in touch with others.

Second, social media shapes people’s ways to conduct business in the marketplace. In the past, many big companies just can use newspaper or TV advertisements to promote their products. Thanks to the social media, many big companies can spread their products promotion wider and wider using Facebook, Twitter or micro blog. An article in the New York Times mentioned, “Much has been made of how big companies like Dell, Starbucks and Comcast use Twitter to promote their products and answer customers’ questions.” (Miller 2009) Those small companies also can promote their brands and product, attract cooperators and recruit staffs using social media with limited amount of money. The New York Times article also mentioned, “For many mom-and-pop shops with no ad budget, Twitter has become their sole means of marketing.” (Miller 2009)

Third, social media shapes people’s ways to watch entertainment. People of course still can watch movies in movie theaters, buy music in music stores and watch TV