Do you thing the meaning of photography has changed through the increased use of social media?

[Julie]

I want to know what professional photographers and amateurs alike felt about the changing content of photography?
Do you think social media has had an impact on what photography is and the way we look at images today?
How do you feel about apps like snapchat and instagram?
Do they help or hinder photography?

[teeny-tinyocean345]

Not remotely the same impact as digital photography.

"social media's" impact is more of a passing fad, a style to deliberately imitate in the same manner as faking shaky hand held camera work became popular with the advent of cheap video cameras in the late 80s.

[Perki88]

I feel the standards for quality have been lowered due to the glut of images on social media, It will be interesting, though, for future historians.

[qrk]

Not really. Back in the 60s, we had the ubiquitous Kodak Instamatic camera. People went crazy taking pictures. They showed pictures to their friends and then stuffed them in to a shoe box - unsorted - never to be seen again until they get nostalgic for the old hippy days of yore.

It's not much different today. People take lots of pictures, post them on a social media site for their buddies to see, and the pictures scroll off the bottom never to be seen again.

The one impact it has had is the importance kids place on selfies which is a bad statement on the youth of today.

[Steve P]

Good grief, I could write pages and pages on this topic. Very briefly, I think "social media" has done major harm to the respect once given to the skill, craft, and art of good photography. It has certainly created a generation of delusional people who think all they have to do is buy a camera and it will magically make them a good photographer. What is even worse are all the absurd people who think owning a camera means they can also be "a photography business". It is pathetic. A photographer was once respected as a skilled profession and people had no qualms about paying the price for a professional's skill and time. Now, almost every entity that draws a breath thinks they are a photographer, even if they only have a phone, and that anything they do is just as good as a pro can do. Due to the never ending glut of garbage photos on the web now, there is far too much perception by the general public that anyone who does provide a photography service should be happy to do it for almost free. The advent of the digital camera is truly at the heart of this paradigm shift, social media is just an offshoot.

steve