ABSTRACT
The social media have revolutionized our lives in ways we are only beginning to understand. The invention of the smart phone, which is the way many people access the social media, has had an incredible impact on our everyday lives, since it can be used to send emails, check emails, send photographs, take photographs, make videos, tell us the time, and do many other things. After offering some statistics about social media, this chapter discusses their impact on our media, culture, and society, after offering some statistics about social media. It also discusses texting and how it has impacted on personal relationships. The chapter also offers a psychoanalytic interpretation, using the theories of Erik Erikson, of the role the social media and smart phones play in the lives of people. Texting may be having an impact on the way people communicate, since many text messages use inventive abbreviations of one kind or another, and sometimes just fragments of language.
