The Birth of a New Age

     There was a time as a young boy that I got my first cellular device in the 7th grade. My parents thought that once I reached middle school, it would be important to be able to contact them if needed. It was also the first year that I stayed after school for football practice so that may have played a part. I was certainly not the first person to get a phone and I certainly was not the last one, but it was truly the birth of a new age. We were able to play games against each other, text each other during class, and be some of the first kids to experience social media. While reading the first chapter, I became fascinated by the amount of time it took to adopt to this new age when it came to gaming and social media. It reminded me much of my experience in middle school as more and more kids got phones and social media thereafter. 

    The Stukent textbook states that it took only four years for Facebook, one of the biggest social media platforms, to reach 50 million users. It also states that it took Pokemon Go, one of the biggest mobile games of all time just 19 days to reach 50 million users. As a younger person who grew up in the age of social media, these numbers are not as surprising as I first thought, especially with how popular other platforms of social media are nowadays such as Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. While this new age of social media was great, there were also some negative effects I was once not aware of. 

    Section three of the first chapter talks about the advantages and disadvantages of using social media in a business sense. Some of the advantages that stuck out to me are that it broadens the reach of your company's marketing ability and opens the opportunity to increase sales through a different avenue. The main disadvantage that I wanted to discuss is the lack of personal, face-to-face connection. This is something that I never would have thought of happening back when I was in middle school but have grown to acknowledge and understand the effect it has on society. While social media has brought a lot of good and possibilities into this world, I have learned that it is still important to realize the disadvantages that may come with it.