Social media is the largest mainstream technological development of recent years. While it has undeniably lead to an increase in the interactions we have with others, I would argue that these interactions also inherently seem less meaningful due to more stringent mediation. The latest generation of social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Digg, is characterized by highly formalized, high-frequency content formats—streams of short messages, status updates, short videos, and other forms of content, all apparently aimed towards instant gratification for short attention-spans. It appears that the more structure we impose on communications, the more homogeneous and predictable they become.

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