> However, the original commenter is right by saying that social media is far from being a necessity.
We need something to allow people to organize around friends/topics/places and discover ideas, share, make sense of the world, act, etc. Reddit, Facebook, and twitter served those needs. I prefer social media over traditional newspapers that are very top down.
Smaller forums and chat servers did that just fine prior to Google shoving them to page 500+ them in favor of the government created platforms and unified narratives. [1]
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3Xxi0b9trY [video][documentary][44 mins]