If you were born anywhere between 1992 and 1996, you may have gone through a similar evolution of social media. We've come quite a long way.
1. AOL Instant Messenger
An easy way to chat with your friends after-school circa 2004. You had a profile full of song lyrics with a contrasting color scheme of black background color and neon green text that was almost impossible to read, and cringe-worthy away messages like "bRb, cHaSiNg My ShAdOw dOwN tHe StReEt, bE bAcK wHen I CaTcH iT, LOLZ =P" And when nobody was online, you harassed SmarterChild.
2. Nintendo DS Messenger
Maybe not everyone had this. But this was the coolest way to talk to your friends, without typing or talking, but drawing. And it was even better because we didn't have to worry about our parents looking over our shoulders. Because the things we talked about were of course SO secret. You could talk to your friends while taking care of you Nintendog at the same time.
3.MySpace
MySpace started to take off in the middle of junior high, and we took it very seriously. Tom was our first friend, and there was endless drama over who was on who's "top 8 friends" list. We could put graphics and gifs on our profiles, like what brands of clothes we wore or the music and bands we listened to. Our profile layouts were essential and we all had some emo/teen angsty song play in the background while we flaunted our peace-sign duck-face selfies.
4. Facebook
Once Facebook was open to all people who had an email address around 2007, we quickly abandoned myspace. Facebook was a "cooler" version of MySpace with more capability, but similar enough that we had no trouble with how to use it. It wasn't as customizable, and we had to have the word "is" at the beginning of our Facebook status'. We all had cringe worthy status' about what our middle and early high school selves were doing with our time. We shared all four years of high school with our Facebook profiles.
5. Twitter
Once all of our parents and older relatives started to catch on to social media and make Facebook profiles around 2009, many of us escaped to Twitter. Twitter was pretty similar to Facebook with the layout, but it was more focused on just posting "statuses," or tweets. Basically we could just tell people what we were doing without our relatives being in our business. Those who were against Twitter often made the argument that it was stupid because all that was written was "LOL just ate a sandwich!"
6. Instagram
In the midst of our transitions from Facebook to Twitter, around 2010 Instagram also started to become popular. Not only could we tell people what we were doing, we could show them too. This may also have created a little more #FoMo when you saw what your friends were doing without you, or maybe you just wanted to show everyone what you ate for lunch that day #Yum #Food #Like4Like!
7. Snapchat
When Snapchat was brought to our attention around 2011, almost everyone had a smartphone with the capability to use Snapchat, and we all became addicted. It was pretty basic in the beginning compared to now, with no story option or animated features to make you look like an old man. "There's ugly, and then there is Snapchat ugly."
While we spend our time trying to explain to our parents and grandparents how to upload photos to their Facebook profiles, it's scary to think that some day we will be the parents who have no idea what our kids are doing with their technology. By then, our Instagram profiles will be the Walkman of social media.
