Aesthetics Perceptions of Social Media Generations

Introduction

We live in an era surrounded by social media. Social media, which has transformed many ways of doing work in all areas of life, has influenced people of all ages. Today, the effects of social media are discussed along with many economic, technological and social events since social media has taken over the world with its global communication network.

Social media can easily be used by individuals of all ages. Now that everyone can access the internet in an easy and inexpensive way, the spread of Web 2.0 technologies has brought interpersonal communication from the real environment to the virtual environment. Thus, people who cannot communicate comfortably in face-to-face communication can be quite social and charismatic online. The effect of communication that the person provides globally through social networks can be quite different and powerful than the real life.

The effects of digitalization and the transformations it creates are spoken worldwide. Besides the social effects, our communication, value transfer, the ways of doing work and even our behavior have been transformed under the influence of social media when the individual is taken into consideration. Therefore, it is seen that many sociological issues addressed in real life are reconsidered by including the effects of social media in current studies. Digitalization has profoundly influenced research in all fields. One of these areas is communication. The forms of interpersonal communication and value transfer are signs of being a society. Social coexistence is important, and today, societies have taken their place in online networks as virtual societies by changing platforms.

Intergenerational value transfer has also been influenced by online platforms and especially social media networks that have emerged with Web 2.0 technologies. Tarhan (2018) divides the values ​​into two as universal and cultural. Accordingly, culture-specific values ​​consist of universal values ​​mixed with various doses. For example, while one culture emphasizes love, another one emphasizes honesty and another diligence. However, in all of these cultures, the social unity of the society is created with bricks built from values. There is a dose difference between the anonymous values ​​of each society and the cultural identity of the society is shaped accordingly.

There are people from many cultures in the virtual world just as in the real world. The participatory culture is generally the dominant culture in societies. In such a culture, members believe that their contributions are important and feel that they have established a certain social bond with each other. In this culture, it is very important for people to be accepted in the society and what someone else thinks. The most common example of participatory culture nowadays is social media networks. It is important for people on social media networks to be accepted by others on their networks. Therefore, people try to be accepted with edited contents in photographs, text and video formats. The thoughts, the quantity of “likes” and the comments represent being accepted by the others on the network in social media culture.

On the other hand, social media includes people of all ages and this made it necessary to reconsider the concept of generation. Generation studies used to address intergenerational communication and value transfer in the real life. Nowadays, the fact that people behave differently on the online platforms caused the need to update the generation studies by taking into consideration the interactions in the virtual environment. Generations are examined around the world by grouping with certain names. Thus, generations are generally called as the Silent Generation (1927-1945), Baby Boomer (1946-1964), Generation X (1965-1979), Generation Y (1980-1999) and Generation Z (2000 and later).

When the literature is examined, there are many studies conducted according to the generation perspective. In these research, by focusing on the value transfer between generations, the work life, school life and communication habits of different age groups were investigated (Akdemir et al., 2013; Alwin & Mccammon, 2007; Biggs, 2007; Ekşili & Antalyalı, 2017; Latif & Serbest, 2014; Özdemir, 2017; Yıldırım & Becerikli, 2013). In fact, in a research, multi-dimensional scales were developed with the aim of understanding generations’ work life, acceptance of differences and social media usage levels (3 scales can be used together or separately) (Deniz & Tutgun-Ünal, 2019a). In order to understand the generations, the use of social media must be investigated and its great impact should not be overlooked.