Early perspectives on social media (using the date range filter)

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Social media is a large part of our lives, for better or worse. People have enjoyed many benefits of using social media over the past decade; and also discovered negative consequences. You're curious about what people's expectations of social media were when it was just beginning. You decide to search the internet to learn more.

Questions to think about:

  • Did we know how big these effects would be when social media first became popular?
  • How well did people predict the impact social media would have on society?

Try it

  1. Open Search Coach.
  2. Enter [social media perspectives] in the search bar and run your search.
    Look at the top results. What can you learn about the pros and cons of social media today?
  3. To find results from when social media first began to appear, select the Date range filter and select Custom range, then set the From date to January 2007 and the To date to December 2009.
    To find more results, you can try running two related searches [social media risks] and [social media benefits]. Explore some of these pages, making sure they are from 2007-2009. What were people saying about social media over 10 years ago?

Think about it

  • What early descriptions or predictions apply today? Which don't?
  • Why is it important to try to predict the consequences of a new technology?
  • What other topics would you be interested in getting a historical perspective on? What limitations does the Date range filter have to providing historical perspectives?

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