Televisions: The original social media

When television sets first became commercially available, they quickly turned into the family bonding tool. With only one set per household, families would gather around their TV sets to watch evening programs after dinner, then discuss what they had seen with each other and with friends at school or in the workplace the next day. Whole communities would sometimes gather at one home for weekend games and cheer the town’s team over barbeque and chatter.

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The humble television inspired conversation, reactions, and true socializing.

In this day and age, spoken conversations have been widely replaced by what the digital companies are calling social media. Going by the traditional definition of the word, “social” media must, first and foremost, get people to socialize. In that respect, modern social media is, in fact, anti-social media, because it constrains people to their computers or mobile phones and forces them to interact virtually via platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

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While this form of interaction can still be considered socializing, it does not manifest the term in its traditional form. If anything, it causes users to stay away from reality and tangible socializing, and forces them to ignore the people they are physically with in order to communicate with those who are in a virtual world.

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The Internet has become a popular alternative for watching shows and movies, but TV is still the main channel for filmed media. Like this Facebook page for Mitch Berman, founder of ZillionTV, to learn more about the merging of TV and Internet media in the information age.