Social media has evolved greatly since when I was younger and has become a mainstay in maintaining and making relationships, sharing ideas, promoting yourself or company, and a vital source of news and information for many. My experience with social media is probably very different from most other people my age due to the fact that I have little experience in it. I have no Twitter, no Instagram, and no Tumblr. I rarely use Snapchat, and even Facebook, the one social media outlet I do have, I use maybe a couple times each month. It wasn't always like this. When I was younger I loved interacting with my friends on Facebook, but over time that slowly changed. Now I find myself in the interesting position of viewing social media from the outside, which too many now a days is surprising and even weird as social media has made itself such an integral part of daily life. I remember when I was younger social media was mainly a way to just talk to friends, post stuff that you like, and not much else. At least for myself. The only reason I ever joined social media was to keep in contact with friends, and it's the only reason I still check it on occasion. I believe there is a responsibility to using social media, but there are many people who disregard this. In some ways I have seen social media devolve somewhat. Almost any discussion I see about race, politics, religion or any subject related to such things devolve rather quickly. Generally it gets to the point of people just throwing out slurs and their own opinions and completely ignoring replies unless they want to throw another insult. I have mainly seen this on Facebook, as this is the only outlet I have actually used. However there are two sides to every coin, and there are many cases where social media plays an important role. One case I can think of is Anonymous on Twitter. If you haven't heard of them, they are a group of anonymous people who report about important news events that are largely ignored by main media outlets. This group has actually used its presence and influence to declare cyber-warfare against ISIS, and have made attempts at shutting down ISIS profiles on Twitter. Back in November they managed to hack an ISIS website, replacing it with a Viagra commercial. While you can argue how effective this may be, it shows how much social media has changed, being used as a tool to fight against Terrorism and extremism. Of course ISIS has managed to use it to work for it. Social media has evolved tremendously, affecting many aspects of our daily lives. It's difficult to really accurately say where social media will go from here, other than the fact that it will continue to become more important in our daily lives, and at the rate it is going to become our main source of news and main media outlet.