Facebook, what would you call the phenomena?

[HoneyBadgerDC]

When something like Facebook comes along with such mass appeal that it becomes a part of the worlds social structure what would you call this. Not a revolution, seems bigger than a fad or a craze. Is there a good word that fits this description? Maybe the term social media is all that is needed but it doesn’t seem to capture the full impact that some of these sites are having.

[Bill_Door]

It’s certainly overused, but you could try paradigm shift. It works better in the hard sciences than the social sciences, but could fit here.

[Spice_Weasel]

‘‘Sea change’’?

I hate that expression, but it seems to fit.

@Wiki

Sea-change or seachange, an English idiomatic expression which denotes a substantial change in perspective, especially one which affects a group or society at large, on a particular issue. It is similar in usage and meaning to a paradigm shift, and may be viewed as a change to a society or community’s zeitgeist, with regard to a specific issue.

[Bear_Nenno]

@Spice_Weasel

‘‘Sea change’’?

I hate that expression, but it seems to fit.

Why not just, “Social Change”?

[Senegoid]

Mass hijack of the minds of our impressionable youth! This was only the next obvious and inevitable step after fluoridation of our drinking water!

[Beckdawrek]

Mass hysteria

[Johanna]

I call it the noösphere. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin predicted it over 70 years ago.

[BobLibDem]

It’s the misinformation superhighway. There are people who use it as their primary source of information and have since seen their brains rot from lack of use.

[ZipperJJ]

I read an article earlier this year in Wired about the Internet in Cuba. Cubans don’t really have access to “The Internet” so the people have created their own internal networks. And they have all the same social media that we have. It’s fascinating.

Inside Cuba's D.I.Y. Internet Revolution

If the logistical effort of transporting a physical piece of hardware to millions of people so they can keep up with Silicon Valley sounds ambitious, it pales in comparison to the makeshift technical marvel that makes up Cuba’s other internet workaround. Named SNET, short for street network, it is a homebrewed intranet stretching across the capital and parts of the provinces that reproduces much of the consumer internet we know in the free world. With no fast, affordable access to Facebook, Instagram, or online audio streaming, the Cubans have simply created their own versions of these sites and services internally in a wholly separate network, and they are quickly rushing into the same minefield of acceptable-use policies, cyberbullying, pornography filtering, memes, and general online mayhem that Americans have been suffering for years.

There is an Instagram clone called Foro Wifinet; there is a Reddit clone called Netlab with themed subreddits, trolls, and the whole armamentarium of weaponized, amplified, and threaded nerdy pissiness you see elsewhere. There is the Facebook clone, Sígueme (“follow me”), as well as internet forums powered by phpBB, that ancient workhorse code project that runs every hobby forum from knitting to Jeep repair, all hosted locally.