Social media has been around for years now, and most of us may describe it as any Internet medium(媒體) that can be used to share information with others. But what exactly is so "social" about sitting before a computer blogging(發(fā)博客) for days without anybody reading it, or scrolling(滾屏) through your Facebook feed of information from 500 friends you hardly know? If you ask me, it can be way more anti-social than anything.
Social media is not a "thing". It's not just Facebook, WeChat and Weibo. It's more of a frame of mind(心態(tài)) and a state of being. It's about how you use it to improve your relationships with other people in real life. However, we tend to rely on technology and social media so much that it can actually des troy those relationships.
Social media isn't about numbers. When someone says "social media", web giants like Facebook, Twitter, WeChat and Weibo instantly pop into our minds, often because they have more updates, more friends, more followers, more everything. As the old saying goes, quality over quantity is usually the way to go. So, social media is not just about lots of people aimlessly pushing around lots of information.
Social media needs to have an "IRL" factor——an Internet expression standing for "In Real Life". It should affect how a person thinks or acts offline. After all, social media shouldn't be an end in itself. It was built to improve your actual social life, in real life. Take for example an event that a person attends because they are invited by the host on Facebook through a Facebook event page. Something like that definitely has the IRL factor. Likewise, a WeChat photo that touches someone so much that they feel the need to bring it up and describe it to someone else during a dinner date also has the IRL factor.
In fact, there is no wall between real life and Internet life where true social media exists. Social media is not a specific place on the Internet or just a thing you use to see what other people are doing. It's all about creating meaningful experiences and relationships wherever you may be.