I remember the days before technology really hit my life at full speed. The vacations my family took always included a mandatory stop to Wal-Mart to either buy disposable (not digital) cameras or to develop the film from said cameras. At home, I had a handwritten contacts page with all of my friends’ phone numbers on it, and I would even–imagine this–call them on my landline in my house.

When I think back to these times, I remember them fondly and very vividly. My parents and many, many others argue that it was a simpler time before social media; nobody cared about selfies, #hashtags, or filters. And perhaps I see things differently because social media has been more present in my life than in theirs, and I know how it really brings people together from all over the world.

Even more important than just connecting with others, social media has really changed the literary and art worlds as we know it today. Print magazines might be dwindling, but that doesn’t mean that the writers, photographers, or models are going anywhere; thanks to social media and the Internet, many publications (like Vogue, Teen Vogue, Glamour, etc.) post articles daily, and their audience has now grown to encompass the many millions instead of the few thousand.

In the art world, location-based narratives have transformed the way that people look at art, especially in museums. The millions of people that visit The Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Musée du Louvre each day might never have taken an art history class, yet, thanks to the technology of the modern age, by simply downloading an app or signing up for an audio tour, people can now learn so much about what art stands before them and the amazing stories they all tell.

In short, just like the rest of us, the Humanities world is still growing up. The things of the past, while still useful and beloved, are now making way for the digital future–but that’s not necessarily a terrible thing. In fact, because of social media and location-based narratives, the literary and art worlds are now embedded in places nobody would have ever expected. With the past as a reference and the present as an indicator, I can’t wait to see what’s coming next.