Adam Earnheardt
  • Blog
  • Welcome
  • About
  • Contact
  • Speaking
  • CV
  • Blog
  • Welcome
  • About
  • Contact
  • Speaking
  • CV

2 Trends (I Hope) Dominate Social Media in 2016

1/3/2016

0 Comments

 
Follow @adamearn Tweet
2016 promises to be another exciting year in the expansion of social media. Here are two trends that may dominate the social media headlines next year:

Virtual Reality

In many ways, virtual reality, or VR, has suffered the same plight as 3-D technology.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, 3-D was all the rage. We put on crappy paper glasses with blue and red tinted plastic lenses to watch “Creature from the Black Lagoon.” The experience left us wanting more. It never really worked. It never felt like the creature would jump off the screen and attack us.


Fast forward 30 years, and 3-D is cool again. Most big-budget action movies have 3-D options for viewing, thanks in large part to James Cameron’s “Avatar.” We can easily purchase 3-D televisions for our homes.

3-D is a once again a part of our entertainment vernacular.


But like 3-D, VR technology was inadequate. The idea of creating these immersive, artificial worlds was great, but the technology was limited to teaching pilots learn to fly in simulators. Even if you wanted a VR system for your home, it cost too much and the uses were limited.


Enter Oculus (and their VR product, Oculus Rift) and other companies set on making VR as much as part of our entertainment needs as 3-D. The difference between VR and 3-D, however, is the application to social media.


There’s a reason why Facebook spent $2 billion to purchase Oculus VR, and it’s not because Mark Zuckerberg needed a new toy.

VR is a new way to connect with others, a new form of social media. VR might be used to connect gamers, but other applications promise to immerse people from around the world in the same virtual environment, at same concerts, sporting events, and other important social and cultural experiences.

Social Media in the Classroom

Kenneth Green, director of The Campus Computing Project, wrote “the pace of innovation in higher education can be measured by the 40 years it took to get the overhead projector out of the bowling alley and into the classroom.”

The same can be said of social media. We were slow to adopt the Internet for teaching, and even slower to use social media for learning. We’re not really teaching students, from an early age, how to find good, credible information via social media. But we know they go to social media every day to learn about the world.

Whether students are taking a classes online or in a traditional classroom, most of them have almost immediate access to technology that is far superior to what we had 10 years ago: smartphones.


The good news is that more teachers are asking students to whip out their phones in class to find information. Some educators are developing lesson plans to teach students how to use these devices to find information they can trust, and to be good stewards of misinformation.

Beyond classrooms and VR, here’s hoping that social media in 2016 gives us new options for connecting with the world around us.

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Dr. Adam C. Earnheardt is professor of communication studies the department of communication at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, OH, USA where he also directs the graduate program in professional communication.  He researches and writes about communication and relationships, parenting and sports. He writes a weekly column for The Vindicator and Tribune-Chronicle newspapers on social media and society.

    Categories

    All
    Social Media

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly