Blog #9: Diffusion of Innovations

Diffusion of Innovation

Roger’s “Diffusion of Innovation is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and what rate new ideas and technology spread.” The idea that I will be discussing in this blog will be how much social media has changed from the late 90s and early 2000s till now and how these apps have changed society.

Now, to explain this a little better. Roger’s theory uses a bell curve that uses time which is broken into different elements which are Pioneers, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Adopters, and Laggards. These elements are measured by dates and the time periods in which they were developed. These elements are how I will break down and explain the evolution of social media.

The photo above is known as the first recognizable social media site. It was called six degrees and it was created in 1997. With this site users were able to upload a profile and become friends with other users. This was very interesting to me because I had never heard of this site until I did my research, but also because it sounds very similar to Myspace and Facebook. Six degrees would be in the Pioneers stage of the bell curve because it was the first 

However, now we apps like Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. With these apps, you can stay up to date with where your friends are or what they’re doing by posting pictures or just by making a quick little post. There is also TikTok which is used to post videos or watch what someone else is posting, your usually able to find whatever types of videos that you need whether it's cooking, dancing, comedy, makeup, etc.

In fact, in 2020 during the beginning of covid 19, the amount of time spent on social media increased by a significant amount. 20.5% used social media 30 minutes to 1 hour, 29.7% used it for 1-2 hours, 20% for 2-3 hours, and 17.9% for 3 or more hours.

 

TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. The picture above is a diagram of the percentages of U.S. TikTok users by age at the beginning of the had the highest annual user growth rate at 85.3%. While Facebook remained low at 8.7%. With the pandemic, people were forced to stay inside and quarantine to keep from contracting the virus and TikTok became an outlet for many young individuals especially, middle, high school, and college students making us the early adopters. 

The older generations would be considered the Laggards of social media because they are the ones who use Facebook. Although they are still hip to using social media Facebook has become one that has been watered down over time. I don’t really get on Facebook much myself

only to see what my family is doing or to update my family on how my life is going. And I think it is even crazier because my mom who is still young doesn’t really get on Facebook as much as she uses to, and my stepdad deleted his completely. However, my grandparents are up there a significant amount and are very active at posting or with what has been posted. I think it’s a little funny to see the shift in users on this one app but it’s also good so that they have something for themselves.

I think that for the most part that social media has been beneficial especially during the pandemic because it gave us peace of mind while we were basically fearing for our health and safety, and it has continued to give us that peace of mind.