Diffusion of Innovations: Social Media

 The “Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations Theory” is essentially “a hypothesis outlining how new technological and other advancements spread throughout societies and cultures, from introduction to widespread adoption.” And, through this theory, we can make a valiant attempt at assessing the potential reasonings or rationale for why this new technology spread at the rate it did, with relation to the context of the times through business patterns, consumer needs, politics, and the socioeconomic stance of the world. When researching Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations Theory, the easiest way in which I could appeal this theory to both my and this generation’s understanding, is applying it to the phenomena of social media.

Social media has taken over the world in a span of only two decades, and has a high-tech international reach no other form of communication could previously offer. In addition to its communicational reach, it also has the world’s mental stability and addictive habits in a chokehold. This large new world of communication pioneered digital communication, and was a major step forward from email, letters, or text messaging. With that being said, the introduction phase was naturally those with whom had the means and the curiosity to invest their time in this new product. Being that most, if not all, social media is free, the possibilities were endless and there was no financial commitment needed, leaving very few reasons as to why not to invest. Since the start of the integration of social media, it took very little time for it to take off. Like any new product, nobody had the foresight to see its eventual harm, leading those to withhold this absolutist idea that this was all a great thing. The early majority then quickly rushed in like a dam's doors opening, leading to a skyrocket in downloads, use, and number of profiles, leading us to the peak/tipping point or “late majority.” From here, we saw applications take off like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and in the most recent years: TikTok. People are now starting to implement this new wave of technology into their daily lives; in some cases people have social media as jobs, or job applications now require your  social media accounts to review in the job application process.   

To this day however, social media still sees a large amount of laggards through the maturation and saturation of social media, in which now it is a part of our daily lives we can not escape. The one thing nobody really thought about with the creation of social media was the massive digital footprint it leaves behind. As everyone is aware, “whatever you post stays on the internet forever.” Although it gives this new range of communication, it is also breeding grounds for controversies, misconceptions, rumors, mental health deterioration, and personal privacy breaching. Social media also showed an increase in FOMO, which stands for “fear of missing out.” In fact, statistics have shown that around 56% of social media users and 69% of millennials experience FOMO. Which then, has the ability to lead to things such as mental health deterioration. Social media also has proven to breach our personal privacy in the past couple years, with apps such as Facebook and TikTok stealing and selling our personal information. There is also the generational gap, as those who are already half or more than halfway through their lives are grown adults and do not feel the need to get into social media, which is deemed by the eyes of society as a “childish” endeavor. For these reasons, and many others, laggards choose to not adapt social media (and probably rightfully so) into their daily lives. 

In recent years, we are starting to see this saturation phase, as there are no real new innovations being made, just different variations of the same applications that do essentially the same things. A perfect example of this would be TikTok and Triller. They are both applications which do the exact same thing in an already saturated market. The same can be said for photo apps such as VSCO, Lightroom, and Picsart. 

To conclude, this new form of communication comes with many benefits and expands the arms of technology and communication globally, but it undoubtedly comes with other questionable effects as well. As long as we proceed with caution, similar to how we would with reading side effects on a medicine bottle, we can find a way to healthily integrate social media for all.