While approaching what the future holds in regards to social media and digital communication, there are always going to be two sides of the story. When it comes to the technological innovations we have seen over the past decade, we have come a long ways since dial-up. But, not everything can be all flowers and rainbows. There is a dark side to the way our society has adopted and adapted to digital communication.
From a business standpoint, digital communication and social media platforms are the probably one of the greatest things to happen. I don’t think there is a company out there right now that doesn’t use any social media platforms to help build and market their brand. According to Forbes, some of the most desirable internship and full-time opportunities are working for these giant tech companies. Social media has such a massive reach that companies are able to use target marketing and online surveillance to reach their target market easily. They are also able to promote sales, events, food, festivals, and everything else under the sun. The future of marketing is incredibly promising because of digital communication and the technological advances that are yet to come.
Now here’s the negative side. Social media and digital communication has changed the way we think and act with one another. When I say this I mean we are interacting more yes, but we are not interacting the way we should be. We rely heavily on our mobile devices and the Internet and it has made us become dependent on them as the technology keeps advancing. We are not living in the moment anymore and we constantly feel the need to refresh our newsfeeds and timelines while documenting everything. What many of us are unaware of is how every digital footprint we leave, people are using that, analyzing it, and selling it. We are constantly being targeted by companies because of our previous searches and our privacy is diminishing. Whether we like it or not, what we think we are keeping private is actually up for grabs by anyone (mainly corporate giants) who is willing to use it and capitalize off of it.
Ultimately, in our digital future I hope to see more privacy changes despite the fact that it probably won’t happen. There is so much data flying around that it will be impossible to collect it all and “dispose” of it or make it untraceable. Aside from the privacy matter, I am excited to see what the future holds in terms of digital communication and digital technologies.
Questions:
- Do you agree or disagree that digital communication has affected our social relationships for the worse?
- Do you think there will be any privacy changes, gain more privacy, in the future? Or do you think the issues will only go further downhill?