What is the Social in Social Media??

Social media through the internet has greatly impacted the way that people in society interacts with one another. There are many great and not so great consequences when interacting with other people online. The internet is a great and easy way to reach a large amount of people and get your voice heard, but replacing a real social life with the internet could lead to a lonely future, as explained in this quote:

"Keen warns that we will end up in an anti-social future, characterized by the “loneliness of the isolated man in the connected crowd.”¹⁶ Confined inside the software cages of Facebook, Google, and their clones, users are encouraged to reduce their social life to “sharing” information. The self-mediating citizen constantly broadcasts his or her state of being to an amorphous, numb group of “friends.” "

I tend to agree that the advancement in social media allows people to become lazier when it comes to interacting with people in person. Communication through the internet is whether it is through e-mail, Facebook, twitter.. etc. is causing people to be less inclined to make the effort to speak people in person when it is much easier to do it through the internet. I think that we rely on the internet too much and it is starting to change the way that we interact with people. If it was not for the internet I know that I would try  harder to have a social life and leave my house. Most days I would rather stay inside and be on the internet instead of hanging out with my friends. I think that we would all try harder to make real connections with people in person if the internet did not exist. With that said, I believe that social media has made it possible for anyone to be heard and it is great for society as long as we keep it balanced with communicating in person.