社交媒体(shè jiāo méi tǐ) - social media in Mandarin

社交媒体 (shè jiāo méi tǐ) is social media, built from 社交 (shè jiāo, social, socialising) and 媒体 (méi tǐ, media). It is a direct calque of the English term and works exactly the way it looks: media that is social, used for the whole category of platforms rather than any one of them by name.

GCSE questions about technology and its effect on young people lean on this word heavily: 社交媒体对青少年的影响很大 (shè jiāo méi tǐ duì qīng shào nián de yǐng xiǎng hěn dà), "social media has a big influence on teenagers", is a stock opinion-essay sentence, and 花时间看社交媒体 (huā shí jiān kàn shè jiāo méi tǐ), "spend time on social media", is the natural way to describe the habit itself.

It overlaps closely with 社交网站 (shè jiāo wǎng zhàn), social networking site, and in casual speech people often use them interchangeably. 社交媒体 (shè jiāo méi tǐ) leans towards the platform and content, apps, posts, feeds, while 社交网站 (shè jiāo wǎng zhàn) leans towards the site itself as a place you visit, but the boundary is soft rather than a hard rule.