In the year of 2013, I have learned different ways of how social media has not only evolved, but has evolved people.

1. The way selfies have changed: The way selfies have evolved changes everything in a person’s life. From an innocent picture of someone smiling from the head up or making a weird face, to girls taking pictures in the mirror with a little too much chest, or a guy with a mirror selfie and flexing his arms. In the end, the person who has taken the “new and improved” selfie has proved to people who saw the selfie that they’re “popular” and are “good looking”. Both boys and girls are attracted to what seems to be trying to impress the other about how good they look. Either way, the status of the selfie is almost unknown, and has changed too much to the point where selfies can show who a person really is, only online.

2. How people are bullied through social media: 25% of teens are bullied online, and 95% teens have social media. Experiencing the bullying is horrible, it almost feels like you’re being punched in the stomach repeatedly. Hate pages are created via Instagram, or anonymous hateful words are sent through Ask.fm! Most teens who are the bully, think they’re able to get away with it better than physically bullying the person face to face. This changed throughout the year of 2013 to make people more clever as to not revealing their identity or coming up with even more lame comebacks.

3. How to catch someone in a lie: The easiest part of social media, it leaves footprints to track. It’s simple to catch someone in a lie, and “check-in” on them. When someone likes a photo via Instagram or Facebook, you can see it through your news feed. If you have a suspicion that someone is lying to you about where they’re at or if they left or not, you can check their recent posts and your news feed for whomever you’re following.

4. Develop what their personality is like: Just by looking at what the person posts, you can see if the person is depressed, popular, or if they’re any trouble. You can tell that they’re popular if the number of followers they have are doubled than how many people they’re following. If the person is depressed, you can tell through what they post, depending on the colors and what their captions are. If they’re any trouble you can see posts about them through different accounts, or if they post pictures of anything that isn’t safe or isn’t legal.

5. How filters change people: I can also tell about how filters change people. Filters are used to make an image look better or higher quality. Filters show how the person can have flaws in their face or not. Girls often use filters to make sure that their face looks flawless, and make sure to have good shadow definition. Black and white filters are often used so that the person’s teeth look whiter, or their white shirt looks cleaner. Filters create what the person is show to be, and often isn’t a true image of who they actually are in person.