6- Global Trends

Global Social Media Trends 

Social Media is constantly evolving with the world and has new trends every day. Social media has been insanely accurate the past few months as every one has been stuck indoors or at their houses due to COVID-19. Businesses and organizations are trying to keep users engaged by posting interactive challenges. For example, National Student Athlete Day was this past week and the NCAA used a template on their Instagram for athletes to fill out and post on their story. Athletes all around the world from different sports participated in the challenge. Instagram has multiple trends like the one I just mentioned like the StayHome story that people from all over the world can add to, to show their participation in social distancing. Filling out Instagram story templates has become a trend in itself. There are even certain accounts that their sole purpose to come up with new templates for users. These templates typically feature spaces to put gifs for things like favorite food, color, hobby, book, Disney Character, etc. There are also bingo templates like "Quarantine Bingo" where you can try to get bingo by doing things like reading a book or finishing a puzzle. Most of these templates want you to tag three friends to join in a well to build popularity of the template. Photo challenges are also filling up the feed. A large trend was "Until Tomorrow" where users were challenged to post an embarrassing photo of them and leave it up for 24 hours.  Most people just posted pictures of themselves when they were toddlers or teenagers. The newest trend I've seen is posting your first ever photo with your significant other and tagging other couples to do the same. The goal of these trends is to bring fun and positivity to media during such dark times of this pandemic.

When talking about media trends it's hard not to bring up a highly popular app like TikTok. Incase you live under a rock TikTok is a Chinese video sharing social media application founded in 2012. Due to COVID-19 TikTok has seen a surge in new users and the amount of videos being shared, because lets be honest everyone is bored out of their minds staying inside. People are creating new challenges and catchy songs for everyone to use on their videos. One of the trends sweeping the app right now is the mugshot challenge where users are creating short videos with makeup taking fake mugshots with the crime they think they would commit. Users are also uploading tutorials for different things like recipes, workouts, arts and crafts. Like I previously stated people are very bored in their homes which is why building toilet paper walls in your homes to see if your pets can jump them is also trending on the app. Playing pranks on family members are also very popular like coating raw eggs in chocolate and refrigerating them to pretend their cake balls and instead they bit into a raw egg. TikTok is also known for the dances users create and then catch on with others. There are users that have gained large amounts of fame just from their dancing abilities being showcased on the app.

Global Trends on social media are constantly evolving no matter the circumstances. However, in a worldwide pandemic the amount of time and post have rapidly increased as people don't have much to do. Positivity on social media has also gone up as we are constantly thanking medical workers and emergency services. When/If life goes back to normal will we continue to see this spike in social media grow or will everyones lives returning to how it previously was make a small decline in new users and content.