The year 2020 has certainly been a year for the books. From an unexpected deadly pandemic to a hectic presidential race, 2020 has been a highly publicized year that we will never forget. This year, social media has been a monumental tool for the younger generations to find out about current events, keep up with trends, and post about their own opinions about the year. Despite being a normal, common experience for Generation Z, social media is a rather new concept that is far from perfect. There are always new updates and changes to the apps that people can’t get enough of today. Along with those new changes, negative consequences are just as common. So in this exhausting and hectic year, how exactly has social media been used?
Currently, roughly 3.6 billion people are active users of social media platforms. Out of all of the social platforms they use, the most-used is Facebook. Younger generations aren’t as active on Facebook and often view it as a social platform for older generations. This year, Facebook was a major hotspot for current news and had been updating itself constantly to be more appealing to more demographics. Unfortunately, due to the rapid updates, the app caused multiple other apps, such as Spotify and Pinterest, to crash. Although this has been a reoccurring issue for the platform, they have been resolving it as fast as the problems have appeared! However, Facebook has struggled with positively impacting its own heavily-used app, Instagram. Recently the app was newly updated, to bittersweet feedback. The app has prioritized new features like reels—a short video platform similar to TikTok—and Store, a feature allowing people to buy from small businesses directly through the app. Many social media personalities have been speaking out against the app’s update and even have threatened to delete the app due to the shifting of normal notifications to accommodate the new features. Compared to its other more successful years, Facebook has been infamous for bad updates and causing crashes across different apps this year!
Another well-known app, Youtube, has also been a major news and entertainment outlet for many younger and older generations. Many creators and viewers worldwide were upset recently due to the usually reliable app being down. Many videos wouldn’t play and were stuck on the loading screen. Youtube TV, the platform’s streaming service, was also affected. The issue lasted roughly 24 hours until the issue was eventually resolved. Another highly-rated video platform, TikTok, was also recently malfunctioning. The videos’ likes and views were not visible for many users of the app, which frustrated many influencers who use their following to earn income.
These are a few of the multitude of social media disasters that have happened in the crazy year of 2020. Although usually helpful for daily browsing, learning, and entertainment, social media can be incredibly unreliable for day-to-day use. We never know when our favorite video streaming service will be broken or whether our favorite dog photo account on Instagram will be deleted, so it’s important to be engaged in things outside of social media. Even though you can learn about global warming on your favorite activist account, you can join an environmental club or attend an environmental strike and make an even greater impact! Overall, you should always have an identity outside of social media and never be fully dependent on social platforms for news and entertainment, because it will not always be trustworthy!
Citations
Kat Tenbarge. “Why People and Influencers Hate the New Instagram Update – Insider.” Insider,
Insider, 13 Nov. 2020, www.insider.com/instagram-update-new-layout-hate-reels-shop-notifications-james-charles-2020-11. Accessed 4 Dec. 2020.
Peters, Jay. “YouTube Went down around the World, but It’s Now Fixed.” The Verge, The Verge,
12 Nov. 2020, www.theverge.com/2020/11/11/21561764/youtube-down-outage-loading-videos. Accessed 4 Dec. 2020.
Vincent, James. “Spotify, Pinterest, Tinder, and Other IOS Apps Were Crashing Again Due to a
Facebook Issue.” The Verge, The Verge, 10 July 2020, www.theverge.com/2020/7/10/21319784/ios-apps-crashing-spotify-tiktok-pinterest-tinder-facebook-sdk-certification-issue. Accessed 4 Dec. 2020.
