The History of Social Media and How These Platforms Are Deceiving Our Lives

The History of Social Media

Internet, our source of information for anything and everything we like to gain knowledge about. We have Wikipedia, the most visited site on the internet to get the minutest details about any celebrity, to gather scientific, geographic, psychological and other knowledge. Then, there are all these social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp and Snapchat.

We’re an ever evolving race, from as far as the era of primitive age or even before that (I don’t know, I was never really good in the History subject in school anyway). The only thing constant is our evolution as human being. We have learned to be dependent on the electronic supplies of various kinds. From our kitchen supplies to our cleaning methods. We’re completely dependent on technology. Surfing the internet is one such dependence that we’ve adapted in a quite good way. All was fine, till we used internet on our desktop or laptops. We started becoming more reliable on the internet, after the evolution of this thing we’re all so obsessed to now, our mobile phones.

Let’s have a look at how these social media platforms have evolved over the years.

The Rise of Social Media

We cannot forget the ‘Orkut’ which was Google’s social networking site. There was a time when this social site was the only popular site, with an intention of connecting with our friends and family. There was ‘MySpace’ and ‘Friendster’ also, but I remember using Orkut more than the other social media platforms.

Facebook was launched in 2004 and is believed to have killed Orkut. When Facebook was launched, it’s intention was just the same as of ‘Orkut’. Ever since its launch, Facebook made sure to evolve on continuous basis. While Orkut had testimonials, where having the most number of testimonials made us happy, Facebook had ‘wall’, where we could draw grafitis on our friends’ wall and interact just the same way as we would on Orkut. Facebook has changed over the years, from being able to draw grafiti’s on the wall to being able to update our statuses with check-ins and much more.

Then in 2006 a threatening competition for Facebook was launched – Twitter. The concept of Twitter was completely different than that of Facebook. It invented “#’s or hashtags” and became a platform of sharing opinion through ‘tweets’. Twitter introduced not only hashtags but also introduced trending topics. With its uniqueness of character limit of 140 characters and hashtags and trending topics, people started moving to twitter, soon after its launch. All this became a threat for Facebook and it didn’t feel any shame in adopting hashtags and trending topics to its own site.

Then came Instagram (launched in 2010, acquired by Facebook in 2012), initially started as an app to showcase your photography talents, but people who were selfie-obssessed uploaded their pictures instead. The uniqueness of Instagram was that we could upload pictures only through it’s app. The desktop version was just there as namesake. Instagram was also a threat to Facebook, because people started focusing on updating pictures on Instagram and stopped using status updates. But, Facebook was successful in acquiring Instagram in 2012.  

In the same year, there was another app that became a threat for Facebook that is ‘Whatsapp’. Through this app we became closer to our friends and families and had no more need to go on Facebook, since the objective of Facebook was also the same, but with Whatsapp, it became even more instant. However, Facebook succeeded in acquiring Whatsapp in 2014 and was no more a competition.

In 2011, Snapchat was launched. With its unique concept of letting a person share all the things that Facebook allowed us to share already, but with a twist that the images remain as your story for next 24 hour from the time you upload it. This uniqueness caught attention of youngsters and their focus started shifting from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to this new app called Snapchat. Facebook successfully copied all the features of Snapchat to all three social platforms – Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.

How These Platforms Are Deceiving Our Lives Subconsciously

Through the History of Social media, we know how it has evolved over the years and how it has become an integral part of our life. So much that when we have our mobile in our hand and even if we’re shitting, we’ll not forget to update it on these platforms. I happened to stumble upon one similar article (read it here), where I read lines that made shook me from within and made me think on how true it actually is. The lines can be read in the article linked for everyone reading this, but I would also like to highlight the lines, that made me think how Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Whatsapp are helping us feed our egos in disguise. The lines were “On the one hand, Facebook builds social connectivity ... but it also isolates people and creates situations where we are ‘alone together’ and Facebook can fortify friendships ... but it can also destroy relationships”. The whole article makes a lot of sense. It has definitely destroyed my friendship with one of my best friends. Maybe this is also the reason, that I am using my blog to vent out my anger. But that’s secondary.

It was only recently, that I was talking to my friend and discovered that he had deleted his Facebook account. I wanted him to share my Facebook page on his timeline and invite his friends to like my page, in order to gain likes. Ya ya, even I am a victim to this whole addiction thing. But thankfully, my introverted nature has helped me on not updating each and every detail of my life on Facebook, Instagram or Whatsapp. I never took efforts in downloading Snapchat :P.

I asked him why did he delete his Facebook account?.

He replied, “I was in depression for a month and more.”

I said “I cannot even do that, because these social platforms help make my ends meet.”

He said “He knows, I want to but cannot, because it helps me survive.”

Since I had focused the topic on me, I asked him again

“Tell me why did you delete Facebook?”

To which he replied “Facebook was too addictive and he was becoming too much of a stalker, seeing the entire world happy except myself.”

He continued, “I saw how people were enjoying there each day and kept sharing many updates. 

Maybe, I envied all of them”, he said

I was listening to him.

He added, “I took a pause, a deep breath and even cried not ashamed to share that guys do shed tears). It was tough time, like a really, really toufh time, so I started doing small small things to overcome it and slowly left Facebook too.”

I heard him speak his heart out silently. After he was done with explaining why he left Facebook, I told him

“Facebook is a place where people pretend to be happy, even if they’re not, in order to be in the rat race of showing others and with a hope that the ones who are watching them being happy are jealous of their happy life.”

I gave him an example of his friend he had once talked about. His friend was traveling to Leh-Ladakh, a road trip, who was sharing his happy moments on Facebook. However, the truth was, he had been on that trip just to escape from the heartbreak he had had in January, 2017.

“Look at how your friend Rakesh is pretending to be happy when is not, by updating about his road trip and by other updates like where he was partying last night and much more”, I further added.

He said, “Exactly, this is the problem and no one wants to admit it.”

Our conversation ended there. But we both realized that, we all need to accept that not everything should be updated on Facebook. Even if you’re happy, there’s someone out there from your friends list, who may not be as happy as you are and can give them one more reason to be unhappy.

This is not the only incident. While I was typing the above conversation, I recalled one more of such incident. There’s one more friend of mine who keeps disappearing from Facebook, from time to time. He calls it his “hibernation mode”, where he says he spends too much time all day mindlessly on social networks because he has nothing to do, after a point he sees the futility of it and vanishes. However, he doesn’t delete his account like Anish did out of depression, but that’s an example, that people do feel Facebook is a useless place after certain point. (Btw, I told him the same thing, wish I could vanish or delete my account like you guys do, only if social media had not been providing me my livelihood).

I also know many family members who update about how beautiful their life is, but in reality it’s completely the opposite of what they show others through their updates.

I have also seen many of my friends update their check-ins because one of their friend parties regularly and updates the check-ins regularly. Purely out of jealousy, people step in the shoes of their friends. And the chain continues. For whatever reasons, we are totally not using social media platforms for right purpose. It’s high time, that we draw a line and make a point of not crossing that line to boost our ego by showing off through our status updates, check-in and unknowingly make others unhappy or depressed.

P.S. I know, people reading this article (only if you’ll reach till the end, because of the length of the article), may think, that I am myself using a social platform to rant about other social platforms, but then I had to write this article, because, it made me feel that we are not using social media platforms for right reasons and my recent conversations with few of my friends, I could only conclude, that it is becoming a source of rising jealousy, comparisons and making a person lose their self-confidence.  

P.P.S. I didn’t inset ‘Raj’ in the whole post anywhere, so for no reason, mentioning his name in the end :P.