In today’s age, we are surrounded by technology. Whether we know it or not, technology in the modern world has evolved from simple tools to the center of our culture. It can be seen in everything from everyday appliances such as a toaster to revolutionary medical advancements like robots who can perform surgeries. Despite all of this, one form of technology has dominated and controlled popular culture for the last decade, social media. Social media are defined as “computer-mediated tools that allow people to create, share or exchange information, ideas, and pictures/videos in virtual communities and networks” (Wikipedia), or in other words, are a place where people can express themselves in a world separate from their real one. This includes sites such as twitter, Instagram, google+, pintrest, vine, tumblr, and facebook, where users constantly log onto check their profiles, post new ideas or photos, explore new trends, and connect with people from all over the world. For us teenagers especially, social media has become big part of our everyday lives and adolescent culture. However, in recent years, social media has evolved from simply a form of enjoyment to a medium of social change. Things like the Twitter Revolution with hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter, #BringBackOurGirls, and #JeSuisCharlie show that people are using social media as a way to express their opinions and protest things that are happening in the world. And with the ability to communicate these opinions to social media users from all over the world, social media activists are able to spread their ideas to millions of people in a matter of seconds, as seen in this Twitter heat map of the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter, #ICantBreathe, and #HandsUpDontShoot (http://srogers.cartodb.com/viz/3ecef0b4-7cae-11e4-8bbb-0e9d821ea90d/embed_map ). All of this shows that in today’s modern age, technology has become such a cultural center that it has become the new form of social protest, it unites people from all different places and allows them not only to escape the world they live in, but also to change it.
