What are your thoughts on the evolution of social media?

I think we definitely can live without social media, I mean we have done so in the past. But it has improved quality of life dramatically as we can now contact people all over the world, be kept informed of current events—world wide as well as local—and it feels as though in some ways we have come closer as a people.

@cookieman asks the right question.

My answer: whatever you write is going to be wrong. Social media is not mature. It will change. Social media in January 2015 is not the same as it will be next November.

The best you can say is that social media is unfinished.

I believe that social media will become more personal, and be more interagrated with normal human interaction. Right now big businesses own the data we share, there are limitations on how we share, and there are far too many privacy concerns. I think there will be a pendelum shift into a social network that we own as individuals and be less of a public display for anyone to see. Something we don’t have to log into to be apart of, more of a private network that is a digital extension of ourselves, you get to choose who to share with and only when you are willing to share it. Kind of like texting/video/phone but more fluid and adaptable to everyday life.

I think you hit the nail square on the head, @elbanditoroso. Social media will continue to evolve well into the future because society itself is far from unfinished. Who knows? Someday even Facebook could fade into irrelevance and general invisibility as better social media platforms emerge to replace it.

At the same time, I would love to see what @Silence04 describes become reality. I abandoned Facebook some time ago because it was becoming too commercialized and, well, too corporate in its look and feel for me.

In response to one of the original questions, yes, it is possible to live without social media, especially if the definition is limited to the all-inclusive platforms of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit and Pinterist. More broadly defined, so sites such as Fluther are included, I find that these more specialized types of social media do improve my overall quality of life because they do provide a form of human connectedness for me.