Social media is an ever-changing part of communication that we continue to see change before our eyes. The evolution of social media has changed both rapidly and drastically over the past 25 years. What our older siblings and parents used for social media is unrecognizable compared to what we use today.
Our older relatives usually used AOL messenger, also known as “AIM,” or MySpace in the early 2000s. If you were born in the late 90s to early 2000s, you may have used AIM at the end of its existence.
For me, I have experienced a lot of the evolution of social media. I was very young, but I remember using AIM and secretly creating a MySpace around 8 or 9 years old because I was not allowed to have social media at such a young age. AIM and MySpace were nothing glamorous compared to what is offered today.
I began noticing my family and friends creating Facebook accounts around 2009. Although Facebook was created in 2004, I had not even heard of it until I created mine in 2009. Once Facebook became popular, the inevitable demise of AIM and MySpace slowly began. Now, over a decade later, Facebook continues to be the most used social media platform with 2.80 billion users.
For a few years, Facebook was thriving as the primary and most popular social media platform since it did not have much competition at the time. Then, in the early 2010s, another social media platform began gaining popularity. Twitter, although was established in 2006, quickly became the next big thing in social media. The concept of Twitter was to create “tweets,” which were short messages with a limit of 140 characters. Other users are able to “retweet” your tweet and interact with it as well by replying or liking it. Currently, in 2021, there are 192 million daily active users.
The next major social media platform to gain popularity was Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. Instagram started out as an app strictly for posting pictures. Over the years, it has added features like direct messaging and stories, which are temporary posts that disappear after 24 hours. What makes Instagram unique from others in the sense of pop culture is that it is heavily used by influencers, politicians, celebrities and other public figures. Many of these people will interact with their fans and supporters on Instagram much more than on any other social media platform. Before Instagram, the only glimpse we had into celebrity and public figures’ lives were through things like magazines, talk shows and the news. Instagram currently has around one billion users.
Snapchat was created in 2011 and its original concept was to share pictures with others that disappeared seconds after you would open the message. It is arguably the most dynamic out of the social media platforms because Snapchat is always changing and adding new features. On top of disappearing photos, Snapchat currently day offers features like stories and a section dedicated to plenty of media outlets that cover aspects such as news, politics and pop culture. In 2021, there are 265 million Snapchat users.
The most recent and most rapidly growing social media platform is TikTok. This is an app used for sharing short videos. Although it launched in 2016, the app showed exponential growth in users between 2019 to 2021 and now has 689 million users. The app was initially deemed by most as a “children’s app” as it is highly censored. However, the age demographic began to range significantly to now being an app used by all ages. At this rate, it can be predicted the TikTok will soon be the most popular social media platform with the most active users.
