Does Youtube count as social media?

[MAH Toms!]

I'm writing an essay about social media and its affects on youth. I know Facebook, Myspace, Google+, and Twitter are social media, but is Youtube considered one too?

How do you feel about social media? (Please tell me if you are an adult or a teenager, so I can see different points of view)

[epicfail2011]

I would say that youTube is social media, yes. There is an ever-growing number of people uploading videos about almost every aspect of life on that site.

My view is that social media is a part of free speech, and as such it is a 'good' thing. It is allowing individual people (in various countries) to broadcast their thoughts around the world. This is beneficial, because most individual people do not really have the means to do so otherwise. This is a relatively new development that INDIVIDUALS now have the ability to make statements on a large scale. Before the computer age, media was pretty much confined to (and hence somewhat controlled by) large media corporations in the newspaper, radio, and television fields. An individual had slim-to-no chance of getting his statement in one of those 'vehicles' unless the owning corporation agreed with the statement.
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As an example, this 'Occupy Wall Street' movement has now spread worldwide. At first the big, traditional media sources were ignoring it or just giving it very minimal coverage. The movement has grown as big as it has due, in large part, to videos being posted by individuals on youTube. Then those videos are being transmitted on the other social media like facebook, etc. It's a 'snowball' effect; the movement is gaining momentum every day. Whether or not I agree with the movement is irrelevant. I'm just noting the connection between the movement and social media.