Social Media

So, What Is Social Media?

Rather than define the term using a bunch of boring jargon that would probably only complicate things further, perhaps the best way to get a clearer understanding of it is to break it down into simpler terms. To start, let's look at each word individually.

The "social" part: refers to interacting with other people by sharing information with them and receiving information from them.

The "media" part: refers to an instrument of communication, like the internet (while TV, radio, and newspapers are examples of more traditional forms of media).

Okay, so from these two separate terms, we can pull a basic definition together:Social media are web-based communication tools that enable people to interact with each other by both sharing and consuming information.

Yes, it's a broad definition – but keep in mind that social media is a very broad term. This is likely as specific as we can get without zeroing in too much on a more specific subcategory of social media.

Some popular social media