With all the attention for social media, you would almost think that 'social' is a new phenomenon. Nothing could be further from the truth. Up until the 15th century, most communication was 'social'. Until the printing press was invented. Social media are in fact a return to the past.
To put the above statement into context, we first need to determine what social media are. Wikipedia mentions interaction and dialogue as its main characteristics . So there is reciprocity in communication. In other words, two-way traffic.
With this in mind, you can conclude that in the distant past almost all communication was 'social'. In order to communicate with each other, physical proximity was a must. In conversations and by telling stories, people exchanged knowledge, information and emotions. With the advent of the written word, a form of communication also emerged that could benin phone number list involve one-way traffic. A development that was given a major boost by the invention of the printing press . Before that time, reproducing books was literally and figuratively a monastic task. An average book had no more than a few hundred copies in circulation. When printing books became possible during the Middle Ages, the first "mass" medium was born. I write this with some reservation, because it took a long time before books became available to the masses. But the technology was there.
Then centuries passed until the other mass media were invented. Think of radio, film and television. But also, for example, the gramophone record , invented by Emile Berliner. In the early years, the internet was also a medium that mainly facilitated communication in one direction. What all these media have in common is that there is/was no interaction and dialogue: the characteristics of social media.
In a sense, we are returning to the 15th century, when direct contact between people was the norm. The era of mass media is a brief interruption in thousands of years of human history, where there has always been reciprocity in contact. Social media enables us even better to do what our distant ancestors did: talk to each other and collaborate. The big difference is that we can now do this regardless of time and place. The good old days are back, but with an upgrade.