ABSTRACT
Every day, millions of people use social media. While social media is a writing technology, it is also a history keeper, a record of people’s behaviors, a platform, an instigator, a journal, and much more. People can study it, learn from it, and use it for many purposes. There are a wide range of social media technologies, too, from those geared toward the masses and those geared toward small interest groups, from Facebook to Instagram to Twitter. Like with all technologies, however, using social media technologies has its consequences, both good and bad, as demonstrated in this chapter. Looking at specific examples from social media, readers will learn about the various ways that writing on social media can help or hurt us and the roles that writers, tech companies, and the public play in such consequences.
