Social media’s overwhelming impact on all generations
Social media consists of websites and applications that enable users to create, share content and participate in social networking.
Ansie Harding, a professor in mathematics at the University of Pretoria, was the invited guest speaker at the monthly East Rand Business Women meeting held at Summer Place on June 13.
Harding shared her insight regarding social media and its generation.
Harding highlighted the top 15 networking sites, including Facebook, which has approximately 2.196 billion users, followed by Youtube with 1.8 billion, then Instagram.
“Facebook has 1.449 billion users every single day, four million likes every minute and 350 million photos are posted per day. An interesting fact about Facebook is that women have more friends than men.
“A billion unique users visit Youtube every month. Every minute 400 hours of videos are uploaded to Youtube, while almost five billion videos are watched on Youtube every single day.
“The most subscribed to Youtube channel is by PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg. Basically, he talks about everything, but his main expertise is in interviewing games and he has 60 million subscribers.
“An Indian music channel comes in second when it comes to subscribers on Youtube, while Justin Bieber and the Wrestling channel also enjoy quite a following.
“On Twitter, every second there is on average about 6 000 tweets, which corresponds to over 360 000 tweets per minute. Twitter has 500 million tweets per day and around 2 000 billion tweets per year.”
The professor said Instagram is owned by Facebook and launched in October 2010. Currently, it has 800 million monthly active users.
“There are 40 billion photos shared up to date on Instagram and has 4.2 billion likes per day.”
Harding said that Whatsapp is not officially classified as a social media site but rather as a communication tool.
“Whatsapp is close to my heart because if you have children who live abroad then it is your lifeline because you can talk to your children anytime.
“Whatsapp is owned by Facebook and has 1.5 billion users. There are one billion daily active users and it also supports 60 languages in 180 countries. Around 4.5 billion photos are shared daily.”
- Social media generation.
Harding spoke about the different generations and how social media has influenced or changed peoples lives.
• The silent generation is the people who are currently between 73 and 90 years old. They believe that children shouldn’t be seen or heard. They grew up in lean times and they believe that working is a privilege and they respect authority.
• The second generation is 54 to 72-years-old and they are workaholics. They go for promotions, are educated and anti-war.
• The third generation is the Generation X. They are between the ages of 38 and 53 who enjoyed the first double income families and the computers at home. This generation leads a balanced work and family life.
• Millennials are between 24 and 37-years-old and they are the internet generation. They are globally minded, digital natives, enjoy multitasking and the majority are female graduates.
• IGeneration or Generation Z is between 9 and 23 years old. They use tablets, smartphones, are used to social media, and are good with apps. They are 5cloud’ natives, have a short attention span, are used to terrorism, global warming and the first generation of selfies.
• Gen Alpha is 8 years and younger. They are the children of the millennials. This is the most diverse generation. They have a screen in hand before they can talk and iPad is their babysitter.
“Regarding Generation Z, most are born after 1996. They are connected 24/7 to a borderless world, their communication is brief as they use icons, emojis, new syntax, they Google a lot, they use 280 characters on Twitter to express a thought, watch videos rather than movies and they check their cellphones every few minutes.
“The downside of social media is that Generation Z becomes addicted to social media and it has a negative effect on their ability to form meaningful relationships.
“They are on high risk for depression and suicide rates are higher among Generation Z.”
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