New Media and its Role in Society: Negative or Positive?

I remember back in the day, it was easy to see what everyone was updated with.

If something happened in popular culture, everyone had a shared understanding.

The other kids in school knew what to talk about.

Nowadays, interests are fragmented.

You can say it’s because of chord cutting.

Where plenty of people are opting out of cable.

But I believe the reason is deeper.

I believe the reason is for the vast difference in consumption between:

• Traditional media and new media.

New media is just that…

It’s new in the grand scheme of things.

In this article, I’m going to share some things I have noticed about new media and its effects on society.

What is New Media?

New media is the content created on the internet.

Traditional media boils down to:

• Radio
• Newspapers
• Television

For the most part, a lot of this content is bound to a geographic location.

You are listening to the radio…

Out of nowhere, it sets staticky.

That means the transmitter antenna of the radio signal has ended.

And your car, aka the receiver, has gone past the geographic location.

New media is broken down to:

• Podcast
• Blogs
• YouTube videos

There are more, of course.

But I like to call these the core 3.

The radio version of new media is a podcast.

It’s not bound by a geographic location.

This means a kid from France can listen to a podcast that is being hosted in Tampa.

Fame in New Media

You remember when Justin Timberlake ripped off Janet Jackson’s shirt in the Super bowl?

And let’s just say there was a wardrobe malfunction.

That was a tv moment that a lot of people were watching.

It was a shared understanding of a moment.

However, moments like that on new media are different.

It’s because the internet is like a universe.

Each niche is a galaxy of its own.

PewDiePie is a celebrity.

He has over 100,000,000 million YouTube subscribers.

But if he were to walk down the mall, I’m sure a lot of people will have no clue what he looks like.

His 100,000,000 million subscribers are scattered all around the world.

Therefore, the subscribers are not consolidated in the same geographic location.

There are micro-celebrities.

Subject matter experts.

Teachers.

Each owning their respective galaxy.

But often, outside of their galaxy, these creators are virtually unknown.

So one of the strange things about fame in the new media age is that it’s very arbitrary.

What New Media Means for Society

New media allows people to magnify:

• Their genius.
• Their idiocy.

There are a lot of people becoming polymaths before our very eyes.

They are learning so many different topics.

And finding ways to cross-combine these topics to create useful value for others.

Nowadays, they don’t need to wait for scheduled programming to be informed.

Instead, they can scope through new media to find content that is custom fit for their interests.

They are molding themselves in real-time.

But with great power comes great responsibility.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are not using these tools responsibly.

They use these tools without a lick of wisdom.

• Writing block paragraphs of vitriol behind an anonymous account.
• Creating mobs and sending them toward their opponents.
• Chasing the final product but not the process.
• And falling for propaganda.

So new media will create vastly different groups of people.

Some are going to be hyper-aware.

Others are going to have the illusion of being hyper-aware.

Is New Media a Net Positive or a Net Negative For Society?

There’s a saying:

“We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”

When traditional media was king, humans thought linearly.

The typewriter is one of those tools that caused someone to think:

• Because of this, this will happen.

A very linear fashion.

While with new media, multiple realities can exist at once.

The content that you created 5 months ago can suddenly start blowing up today.

This is a very nonlinear way to approach reality.

New media tools will evolve thinking faculties.

I would say some negatives of new media are:

• Higher likelihood of getting brainwashed.
• Idiots having a platform.
• Loss of individual culture in favor of globalization.

And I would say the positives of new media are:

• More innovation from creators.
• Cutting out the middlemen.
• Informing yourself on a variety of topics.

I believe the net positives will outweigh the net negatives.

The brain loves to amplify the negatives.

It may do that with new media:

‘I really miss back in my days when things were like x,y, and z. Things were so great, trust me!’

The mind loves looking at the past.

Call that nostalgia.

But don’t look back so much at the past that you demonize the present.

With a proper understanding of new media, you will see that there are limitless possibilities.

How much society becomes aware of new media’s possibilities will determine its rate of growth.

Using New Media Wisely

New media allows you to go beyond space, time, and causation.

A content piece you create can reach all around the globe.

• Space seizes to exist.

If it’s an evergreen topic, it will be relevant 5,400 years from now.

• Time seizes to exist.

And let’s say your content pieces are not connected.

You don’t need to watch episode 203 to understand episode 204.

Boom…

• Causation disappears too.

View new media as an added layer of skin.

It is meant to magnify a human.

Not reduce a human’s powers.

I believe if 1 person uses new media correctly, then it will make those who are using it incorrectly second-guess themselves.

‘Isn’t it bad to make others second-guess themselves?’

Not when you are making them second-guess limiting thoughts waves.

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