The consequences that digital media has had on its users and the large presence that is has in today’s society can be traced back to a few theories of the source of its impact. The social shaping of technology is the middle ground found between technological determinism, in which the technology itself is the cause, and social constructivism, in which the people are the cause.

Definition: The social shaping of technology is a mix of the capabilities that new technologies enable, and the unpredictable ways that people will make use of them.

          An excellent example of the social shaping of technology can be illustrated by the unexpected success and popularity that social media platforms and their creators have experienced in recent day. So-called influencers from various social media platforms have achieved celebrity status by simply sharing their lives and passion with the world. Nowadays, anyone has access to a world audience with just a cellphone or laptop. Of course, these devices were not created with the intention of allowing people to make a living from using these products. From a technological determinism standpoint, YouTube was created to be an online video-sharing website, with occasional viewers watching the limited content that was available at the time. Cellphones were made to make phone calls, and computers were created to calculate complex calculations faster than it ever was possible before. Now, you can find a video about just about anything on this one website! From a social constructivist standpoint, the consumers were able to shape this platform into a place in which creators could make a career out of their uploads and have consistent viewers, as long as they created content. This is an amazing thing considering the fact that the creators of YouTube, as well as YouTubers themselves would have never been able to predict this outcome from something as simple as recording a video on an iPhone; something that most people can do. Although not every person that has uploaded a video to YouTube has been able to make a career out of it, some people really stood out and were able to succeed.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOtQ5ItDTTw]

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          Casey Neistat is an award-winning filmmaker and popular YouTuber, whose daily uploads average at least a million views per video. A majority of his videos are vlogs, which are video diaries of what he does in a day. He also creates public service announcements in the form of creative and typically humorous short movies. His unique filming style and his daily spontaneous adventures are what sets him apart from millions of other people who create content. In this clip, Neistat discusses the positive effects that digital media has had on people’s’ lives, but he also acknowledges the uncertainty of the future for people in the social media field. He expresses the idea that ten years ago, modern-day YouTube creators could not even attempt to fathom the way that this website would develop and ultimately become their way of life. With the social shaping of technology, there really is no way of telling how these social media platforms will evolve and how the people will use them in the future. Back when YouTube started in 2005, nobody could have predicted its outcome as an entire job industry. With a combination of more advanced technology to come as well as the forever-developing innovation of the people, who knows what is to come in the digital media world! Only time will tell.