[ealgeone]

Social media has had a huge impact on everyday life. Although much of it is frivolous, and is just building on technologies that have been around in various forms for a long time, what's different is that these communication technologies are now being made accessible to the non-technical general population on a massive scale. That is having enormous economic, social, and now political impact around the world.

Yes it is having an impact on everyday life...social media is making us less connected. We send an email or like something on facebook and we think we're communicating. We post a few comments on FR and we think we're interacting.

We're not physically interacting any longer as we did when I was a kid.

Social media has ended the long reign of the information gatekeepers. That's its biggest impact. It is a watershed moment in humanity's political history.

To some degree but that was happening already with the advent of the internet and talk radio.

Unfortunately social media is being consumed by those who don't care about important information. They care more about what the Kardashian's are doing or some other nonsence such as that.

[AustinBill]

I’ve observed for many years that the Internet reflects us as we really are, not as we (or others) imagine we ought to be. The measure of our maturity both as individuals and as a species is how narrow or wide that gap is.