Social Software: A Blessing in Disguise? By Jaritza Flores-Garcia

People like us love being social by communicating, collaborating, and interacting with each other to be their own company. But then something has changed in society that made the social world even more active thanks to the introduction of social media on their devices such as PCs, phones, and tablets to keep users in contact with each other so the real question are these: What is social software, how does it help us to be connected with each other through digital communication, and why it is a blessing in disguise? Let’s explore the term of social software so we could all find the answers to those questions, shall we?

Social software consists of social networking apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many others that enable us, users, to interact and share data through devices. Social media sites could be public or private depending on how our decision will affect the outcome of social media when we use it. In the PDF reading entitled, “Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?”, Danah Boyd stated that “Today’s teenagers are being socialized into a society complicated by shifts in the public and private. New social technologies have altered the underlying architecture of social interaction and information distribution.” She also explained that adults were worried that their children will be corrupted by the power of social media after it was introduced in the 2000s.

Social life in the digital world is like the music we listen to every day that as mentioned to Michelle Kasprzak’s article,  “Abundance in Scarcity”, musicians used their own work to make them interact with their fans so their communication skills would be accurate to perfect the social world which is another example of why social software is very beneficial to all human beings in society.

Not only does social software helps users to communicate with each other through digital life but it also helps to create online communities or groups on social media sites. According to the writing, “A Group Is Its Own Enemy,”  Clay Shirky made a case about social software that she gave an example about the email that “Now, software that supports group interaction is a fundamentally unsatisfying definition in many ways because it doesn’t point to a specific class of technology. If you look at email, it obviously supports social patterns, but it can also support a broadcast pattern. If I’m a spammer, I’m going to mail things out to a million people, but they’re not going to be talking to one another, and I’m not going to be talking to them — spam is email, but it isn’t social. If I’m emailing you, and you’re mailing me back, we’re having point-to-point and two-way conversation, but not one that creates group dynamics.” She also pointed about Bion’s theory on individuality in humans that “He said that humans are fundamentally individual, and also fundamentally social. Every one of us has a kind of rational decision-making mind where we can assess what’s going on and make decisions and act on them. And we are all also able to enter viscerally into emotional bonds with other groups of people that transcend the intellectual aspects of the individual.” These quotes proved that we are individuals who can make decisions based on our social backgrounds so we could have enough time to make new friends in social life.

We found the answers to our questions about social software and now, we know why. It is because it helps us communicate with each other so we could share things through social media but not only that but it creates groups for us to join so could get to know and learn more about each other before we could trust ourselves in society to create friendships that would last for a very long time.

In the closing statement, is social software a blessing in disguise? My answer is an absolute yes.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.