Social media has become so common in everyday society with the advancement of technology that it has been integrated into a vast majority of the overall population's daily life. It is important to recognize and understand what the traits of social media are and how these traits are related to human beings.

Mankind plays a huge role in these technological advancements and the various consequences of technology as a whole.

Numerous social media platforms are interactive — just like face-to-face communication. However, social media allows for interactivity across distances varying in proximity so that individuals can connect with people from different cities, states, and countries.

With the invention of smartphones, social media has become portable, allowing for a continuous connection. Unfortunately, that also allows for the expectation that we all must respond right away when someone contacts us.

Unlike face-to-face conversations or telephone conversations, which are synchronous, texting and instant messaging are asynchronous methods of communication. This means that the people involved are not expected to be “co-present” in the conversation, so a delay between sending a message and receiving one is not unusual.

The ambiguity of written messages can also lead to misinterpreted social cues. Though media richness theory, we can better understand the social cues associated with social media. The richer the media, the more context cues that are provided. Face-to-face conversations are gone forever once they are completed, whereas digital communication is automatically recorded, thus creating a permanent storage space for text-based social media interactions.

Social media also has a greater reach, whereas face-to-face communications are limited to the people who fit in a particular space. Through the understanding of both social media technology and human traits, we are more able to integrate both into daily life while learning how they impact one another.

Even though social media has become a growing form of communication, it is important to remember that behind the screens and behind the messages are real people.

These changes in communication through these technology-based tools have simply increased accessibility better while decreasing privacy to a certain degree.

Mindfulness is key to managing both in-person relationships and computer-mediated communication.