Next Year, Social Media Will Be Gone


"Social media" this!  #blahblahblah. Mark it on your calendar. By this time next year, I predict social media will be gone. And not just from my life. 

Have you been reading all those stories having to do with social media fatigue?  There's been a plethora of personal accounts of people swearing off sharing, demonizing their digital dillydallying, repenting from the sins of all things posted. But anything with this much hype is bound to get backlash. Our society tends to demonize anything that gets too popular.  

But this is not one of those bashing articles. I'm here to tell you social media is not an evil religious cult -- though I bet Satan hates those requests for Candy Crush Saga as much as the next guy.  

Nor do I believe social media is addictive like nicotine. Like Mark Twain and smoking, I think quitting Facebook is easy, I've done it a thousand times -- I learned the first time I quit Facebook though, that wasn't the right approach.

 However, social media, as we now know it, soon will all but be gone from our memories. Gone faster than the image in your mind of Miley Cyrus swinging on a wrecking ball. Hopefully.

It's because "social media" is just a fabricated term to describe digital messaging that's accessible to the public. Newspapers, telephone, radio, television, magazines all are tangible devices. Emails were explained as electronic letters. Texts as digital notes. Social media acts as a place holder on an intangible medium so consumers can understand it, the market could monetize it, and popular culture could make us hate it.

So like floppy disks and 8-track tapes that went away, social media the term will disappear but the practice will remain. It's everywhere and nowhere. In and on everything we use to communicate. In short, it has to disappear because it never really existed. Don't believe me? When was the last time you heard someone call the commercial online sector the World Wide Web? It's just the Internet now.

 If anything, social media is a nutritional supplement to the way we communicate. An extra kick to our digital diet. It is blended into all other media, like fluoride in our drinking water, or niacin in our flour. If not next year, then soon after the term will be gone. And years from now our grand kids will read this and ask, "What's social media? ...and what does a wrecking ball have to do with President Cyrus?"

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