Van Susteren - Everything you need to know about social media: (without calling a kid)

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ALSO BY GRETA VAN SUSTEREN

My Turn at the Bully Pulpit (with Elaine Lafferty)

Simon & Schuster Paperbacks

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Copyright 2017 by Greta Van Susteren

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First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition November 2017

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Designed by Paul Dippolito

Cover design by Jason Heuer

Cover photograph by Marina Di Marzo

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-5011-3244-5

ISBN 978-1-5011-3245-2 (ebook)

To John Coale, my best friend since 1979

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA

(WITHOUT HAVING TO CALL A KID)

We are living through a revolution. This revolution is bigger than the Industrial Revolution, bigger than the automotive revolution, bigger than the great space race. This revolution isnt just changing how we do things, or where we can go, or how we work. It is fundamentally changing how we communicate with and relate to one another.

Dont believe me? Consider this: in about the time it takes you to read halfway down this page, more than 700,000 people will have logged on to Facebook, close to 20 million messages will have been exchanged on WhatsApp, almost one million people will have swiped left or right on Tinder, 347,222 will have tweeted on Twitter, and Snapchat users will have shared 527,760 photos. And those figures dont include the Instagram posts and YouTube video views (another million total), or the 150 million emails that raced through cyberspace in the last minute. Before the day is out, some 40 percent of the entire US adult population will have gotten most of their news from Facebook. And in the span of twenty-four hours, a majority of American teens will have checked their social media feeds more than one hundred times. Even the highbrow Boston Lyric Opera now offers tweet seats, a special section where the audience can use their smartphones to send tweets throughout the performance.

This is social media, and its changing everything.

By now, youve heard about how ISIS uses social media sites, particularly Facebook and Twitter, to recruit terrorists. But social media can also force congressional hearings and a federal investigationwhich is exactly what happened after a group of mothers started a Facebook campaign to express their furor over the $600 price tag for one lifesaving EpiPen. President Donald Trump uses social media, particularly Twitter, to take on the traditional media and communicate directly with people and sometimes pick a fight. At the same time Twitter accounts have been launched by groups of disgruntled federal employees who are challenging the Trump administration, sharing climate change statistics, and leaking internal memos on immigration.

But what can social media do for you? If you are Chris Williams of Hope Mills, North Carolina, social media can save your life.

When Hurricane Matthew hit North Carolina in October 2016, it unleashed devastating flooding. As rivers overflowed in a matter of hours and even minutes, Afghanistan War vet Chris Williams was trapped at home with his elderly dog in a second-floor converted attic. He had already tried to escape and failed. Instead, he was hit by a falling refrigerator, pulled loose from his kitchen by floodwaters racing through his home. Wet and disoriented, Chris tried to call 911 but couldnt get through. There was no chance of a water rescue.

Chriss only link to the outside world was the messages he was exchanging with his brother, Craig, who lives in Austin, Texas, on Facebooks Messenger app. His cell service was gone, but Facebooks mobile device app uses data and doesnt need a cell connection.

As the hours passed, another military vet, Quavas Hart, who had also served in Afghanistan, launched his personal drone to film the flooding and devastation from the air. He posted his video images on Twitter, with the identifying phrase: #HopeMills. At that very moment, as he was communicating with his brother, Craig Williams was also searching Twitter for information on #HopeMills. He saw Harts picture of houses underwater, and sent it to his brother on Facebook Messenger, saying, At least it isnt this bad. Chris fired back that the house on the right, with the blue shutters and the light pole, was his. Sitting in Austin, Craig immediately messaged Quavas Hart. To make sure this wasnt a prank, Quavas flew his drone past Chriss house again and asked Craig to get his brother to wave. The drone saw Chriss arm waving.

Hart was about to launch his own boat to go get Chris when in his drone footage, he spotted a Federal Emergency Management motorboat nearby. Hart flew his drone to the boat, spoke to the crew through the drone, and then had the drone lead them to Chriss submerged house. Social mediaand savvy social media userssaved Chris Williams and his dog, Lana, in what can only be called a high-tech, twenty-first-century miracle. Insane was the word Craig Williams used in summing it up to the Washington Post .

After that, who wouldnt want to be on social media?

When the US Secret Service wanted to repair its tainted image following high-profile security breaches around the White House and amid plunging employee morale, it launched a massive social media campaign on the top sites of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. It created special social media content including behind-the-scenes video and photos; the agencys Facebook page now includes profiles of its Belgian Malinois canines and announcements of indictments that resulted from Secret Service investigations. In six months, the number of people following the agency on Facebook leaped from 452 to 43,000. Its Twitter account added 50,000 followers, and on average 6 million people view official Secret Service tweets.