Introduction
YouTube was created in 2005 by three former PayPal employees and has significantly changed our culture and how we use the internet today. It came out at a time when sites like Myspace were wildly popular and there were numerous websites hosting video. What YouTube was able to do is combine both a social aspect to their site and made it convenient to create and share videos. There has been astronomical growth over the past decade on this platform and it has provided many sources of income for many social media influencers. It has also impacted society and how, what, and when she share. For the scope of this paper we will take a deep look at what YouTube has been able to accomplish in society.
Positives & Negative Impact
YouTube has made it easier for us to have access to all types of information. It is not confined to one type of subject but you can find large listings of content from beauty to automobile repair. You can now teach yourself by watching YouTube videos how to do practically anything and if you get bored it also hosts several sources of entertainment. The world used to be separated from each other and we could not communicate as effectively throughout history as we can now. Not only does YouTube help us to communicate we can also visually see other places more readily. The experiences we are able to have available to us at any given moment can help us make both minor and major decisions. You can find videos of people going on cruises as they vlog the entire trip and you decide for yourself if you’d like to book a room on that boat. There are also people on YouTube sharing their experiences from all types of situations from dating to deeply traumatic situations. You can virtually find so many human experiences that you never have to feel alone as long as you have an internet connection. Also, when there are breaking events worldwide people quickly upload footage of those events. We’ve seen examples of this during the Paris Terrorist attacks and the shootings of young African American boys in the United States. Traditional media cannot keep people misinformed and ignorant with services like YouTube that make it so easy for us to share experiences and footage. Although there is so much good to be said about the service there are some drawbacks. The internet can be a wild place and is not always the safest place in the world. There have been reports of people being bullied online and sometimes people can put up mean videos or even subliminally unkind videos. Also, not everything that is on the internet is accurate and there is often a lot of misleading information that is uploaded. How YouTube can be misused with misleading information is when a speaker creates videos talking about things that aren’t necessarily true like some conspiracy theories for instance. The music industry has complained that YouTube allows copyrighted music to be uploaded [4]. Also, people are allowed to remain as anonymous as they want online and therefore they can feel really free to say very hurtful things in comments underneath videos. This can be a major deterrent in sharing information that really does need to be on YouTube. There have also been stories of stalkers and harassers online shared by influencers and other users of YouTube. With everything there comes a good and bad side as human nature has both highs and lows. Overall, YouTube has positively benefited society and taken our culture in a different direction as we now how more access to each other and the human experience than ever before.
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"YouTube’s Cultural Impact".
Culture
YouTube was a response to many things but I think if it were to all be summed up: expression and information. People have always had a strong need to express themselves. If you walk the streets of most major cities you can find all types of eclectic people with interesting messages they feel like sharing with the world. Expression goes as far back as the earliest printed books to the overflow of literature today. Theatre, dancing, you name it – humans want to share their experience and express themselves. YouTube provided an outlet for people to share their world and how they feel and what they are going through. Some channels are entirely of people sitting in front of their camera and talking for hours answering follower’s questions. Initially I believe YouTube was very successful because it fulfilled people’s needs for expression. Humans have also always made all types of gadgets and encyclopedias to teach, gather, and distribute information. It is the sole purpose of schools and the higher education systems. Before we could look up the meaning of words on Google we could purchase little hand held gadgets we could type words into to find definitions (similar to texting) and before that we had dictionaries. Humans have always had a strong desire for more information. YouTube was a response to the human need for information in a visual format. It has since grown into a regular everyday tool and has been on a steady rise to replacing television. YouTube has also effected every field that exists. It has even taken the mystery out of many different services we used to have other people perform. Although we will probably always want someone else to color our hair, change our tires, and make our clothes; if we are ever financially unable to go to other people for these things we can teach ourselves using YouTube. There are many people on there willing to show us how to do anything that was once privileged knowledge for only people who had studied certain subjects. Not only can we teach ourselves many things we can debate about theology, philosophies, and ideas. There are several deep thinkers on YouTube who can tell us what our religions really mean and help us to really identify what we believe and why. Many gurus of every topic exist online including contentment and happiness showing us how we can live better, simpler lives. Also motivational speakers who pump us up before we go to work or set out to do anything. So as YouTube has taken most fields and made them less mysterious and perhaps made some industries rethink how they are going to make their money it has also helped many people get more clients and exposure. For any free content someone may put up, like a fitness trainer showing people how to lose weight, they will also attract people who want them to help them in real life and pay top dollar. YouTube has effected every industry that exists. All of our systems are beginning to change to accommodate this new digital age that includes written and visual media. One system that we can take a deeper look at would be our business systems. We now have so many different things we measure online and many jobs have been produced by how we use the internet. We now focus on things like search engine optimization, analytics, email campaigns, video content, going viral on purpose, and much more. YouTube is the new business frontier [1]. I is a big business tool for gathering visual content. Dealerships now make videos of every car they intend to sell and upload them onto their personal YouTube accounts. People don’t want to buy until they can first see something online. Also, people pay YouTube celebrities or influencers to review their products and they provide incentives like discount codes and free merchandise. Counselors create topics they’d like to break down and discuss for hours online before doing a book promotion at the end of a video and providing an amazon.com link. I’ve even seen documentary producers on YouTube doing vlogs and taking callers about the topic of their footage. All this occurs online in order to increase the bottom line of businesses. Politics have even changed as vloggers readily dissect everything politicians say and can express when they feel a candidate is lying or will not do a good job. No longer do you just take information about anything at face value because there is always an expert out there with nothing to lose who wants to tell the truth about what they know. Even major scandals have been exposed online through video and uploading on platforms like YouTube. A decade ago people were not very transparent. You would sit next to strangers and no one would want to share anything deep about themselves. Thanks to the information sharing online people are now even more transparent in real life and this is one of the major societal effects of YouTube. Another societal effect includes how people don’t hold trade secrets as closely to themselves as they used to. There isn’t as strong of a fear that if someone finds out how you do something or by what means you are capable of achieving something that they’ll have to compete more. Instead it seems as though people are embracing that what is for them is for them and it’s okay to share what we know with others. Society has also used videos and YouTube as a medium to expose social injustices. People now quickly pull out their cell phones and capture footage of difficult situations so the world can see and weigh in on inequalities and abuses of power. Also it is interesting to see how different age groups view and use technology as teens don’t see computers as technology and have been able to maneuver it well [2]. There is also a potential use for YouTube in education as teachers access it within classrooms when teaching on different topics [3].
My Region
YouTube has affected my region by exposing political injustices in real time. As soon as something happens we see it uploaded in a video. You can often talk about the instance with someone and they will tell you to look it up the video is online. There have been local online celebrities grow into international celebrities (within their field) from my region. As an example, I go to church with a woman who is happily married, in her thirties, with two kids and a minister husband. She started taking Zumba classes in 2008 and became an instructor shortly after. Now that she utilizes her YouTube account by sharing tutorials and videos of her dancing she is being asked to fly out all over the world and host classes. There are also many businesses in my area but they are all slowly headed towards hiring mostly remote workers. When they are incapable of teaching the job live they can upload videos to YouTube and show many people all over the world how to do the job. This way they can hire the most competitive pool of workers because they are not confined to just the region the business is located in. I’ve even met several people who now date outside of the country because the internet has opened up the dating field to a global level. My region is effected in many of the same ways that most regions are currently effected.
Conclusions
YouTube is one of the greatest technology inventions over the past decade and is steadily keeping up with the times and people are constantly uploading videos. We have the ability to express ourselves and access information without ever having to leave our homes. In its short time in existence YouTube has been able to do so much positive for society as it has helped us to experience the human experience in a way that never existed before as we all continue to become more and more transparent. It is perhaps the most humanizing service that exists and unlike other social media networks there is less pretention and “keeping up with the Joneses” like on Facebook or Instagram. It is a place on the internet where people go to tell the truth and be as real as they can and help others. Not only has it been the realest experience on the internet there are many people who benefit from directly and indirectly from YouTube financially. There are not many people left on this earth who have not been to YouTube to watch a video to learn something and it will continue to be a way for us to share information for many years to come as they continue to adjust and progress this platform as they are even updating the user interface right now [5].
- R. Ciampa, T. Moore, J. Carucci, S. Muller, and A. Wescott, YouTube channels for dummies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2015.
- M. Latta, C. Thompson, “The YouTube Effect: How YouTube Has Provided New Ways to Consume, Create, and Share Music,” Internat. Journ. Of Ed. & Arts, Champaign, IL, July. 2011.
- C. Snelson, “YouTube Across the Disciplines” Merlot Journal of Online Learning and Teaching., Boise., ID, March. 2011.
- S. Hamedy. (2016, April 30). YouTube on Music Industry Backlash [Online]. Available: http://www.mashable.com
- J. Long (2016, May 1). YouTube is Testing a New Material UI on the Web [Online]. Available: http://www.androidpolice.com
