Messages From an Ad

This week, you will be studying about the potential psychological impact of social media. Specifically, you will be learning about persuasion and influence through advertisements and acts of violence on social media. The article below speaks, in a very “real world” way to the psychological impact of social media. I hope you enjoy it.

Enjoy this article by Hannah Schacter on Psychology in Action – Retrieved from https://www.psychologyinaction.org/psychology-in-action-1/2015/09/07/me-myselfie-and-i-the-psychological-impact-of-social-media-activity

Me, Myselfie, and I: The Psychological Impact of Social Media Activity

Not too long ago, I relentlessly teased my 21-year-old sister when she revealed her strategies for achieving maximal positive feedback on Facebook photos. There were timing basics—don’t post on Friday or Saturday nights because no one is checking. She also recommended sensitivity to time zones so as to avoid an entire coast being asleep when your picture is posted. There was even attention to Facebook’s sharing algorithms. Rather than posting and tagging other people in the photo simultaneously, it was wise to wait on the tagging. That way, once several hours had passed and the photo filtered into the depths of everyone’s news feeds, a new tag would prompt it to resurface front and center, in turn receiving a fresh wave of “likes”. And wait, there’s more–after almost 10 years on the site, she could even report back to me her most liked Facebook post ever. It all sounded…ridiculous. I chalked it all up to our (whopping) three-year age difference—kids these days and their all-consuming social media obsessions. Back when I was in college…

And then several months later I sent my sister the most shameful text message of all time (for the record, I was only allowed to publish Emily Schacter’s Facebook Strategy Tell-All under the condition that I owned up to my own social media low-point). One morning last month, I posted what I thought to be quite an entertaining picture on Facebook. But, to my surprise, twenty minutes passed by and I had zero likes on the photo. Forty minutes, still nothing. Maybe I accidentally posted it with extra privacy restrictions? Nope. An hour. And still, even my two most loyal Facebook like-ers (I’m looking at you, Mom and Dad) hadn’t given my picture some love. Desperation took over.

I had cracked, and in doing so I lost my privileges to ever mock Emily for her Facebook posting habits again. Why in the world did I care so much about an un-liked photo? Was it really a lack of likes, rather than the four hours a week I dedicate to watching Bachelor in Paradise, that I was concerned made me look like a loser? When and how did Facebook likes become such a valuable social currency? For better or for worse, I am hardly alone in my experience. Recent research has documented how technology, and social networking sites (SNS; e.g., Facebook, Instagram) in particular, have given rise to a growing obsession with impression management and self-presentation online. Whether it’s searching for the perfect Instagram photo filter or carefully crafting a humblebrag Facebook status about a recent publication (personal confession: guilty on both counts), users frequently engage in selective self-presentation strategies to portray an “ideal self” through social media (Chou & Edge, 2012; Manago, Graham, Greenfield, & Salimkhan, 2008). In turn, we seek out social approval and positive feedback in the form of comments and likes. Reflecting upon my own social media usage (e.g., the-text-that-shall-not-be-named) and observing the online behavior of others, I’ve become increasingly interested in understanding the psychological consequences of these online experiences. Put simply, are our relationships with social media healthy?

Source: Comical Concept

With steep increases in the rates of social media usage over the past several years, there has been a growth in psychological research addressing this very question. As with most things I’ve discussed on this blog, the answer is not as simple as yes or no. Although social networking sites offer unique opportunities for interpersonal communication and self-expression, there may also be psychological costs of certain online behaviors. Here I’ll first review some evidence for the dark side of social media, then turning to the bright side of things.

When considering the potential negative effects of social media, there appear to be risks associated with certain types of online activity, rather than SNS usage at large. For example, social media use can be particularly maladaptive when it occurs in the form of passive browsing. That is, when users spend time on sites like Facebook and Instagram exclusively looking at other people’s photos and profile content, it can trigger a sense of exclusion, envy, and loneliness (Krasnova, Wenninger, Widjaja, & Buxmann, 2013). This sort of online surveillance activity can also promote feelings of inadequacy or jealousy in the context of romantic relationships, especially among users who subject themselves to the Facebook-stalking of exes (Marshall, 2012; Muise, Christofides, Desmarais, 2009). Within friendships, excessive monitoring of others’ activities can also trigger feelings of exclusion (e.g., “Why wasn’t I invited to this party??”) and, in turn, increase social anxiety. This phenomenon has come to be known as “FOMO,” fear of missing out, and initial research has found that individuals reporting higher levels of FOMO spend more time on Facebook and experience more negative mood (Przybylski, Murayama, DeHaan, & Gladwell, 2013).

Relatedly, on sites like Facebook, users frequently engage in social comparison processes that can then generate emotional distress. For example, viewing profile pictures of attractive people elicits more negative emotions than viewing photos of less attractive people, and more photo-related activity on Facebook (e.g., posting pictures, viewing friends’ photos) is related to body image disturbances in teen girls (Meier & Gray, 2014). Social comparison on social networking sites, under certain circumstances, has also been associated with mental health problems. In a recent study of adolescents, Nesi and Prinstein (2015) considered the role of technology-based “social comparison and feedback-seeking” (SCFS) in the development of depressive symptoms. They found that adolescents (8th and 9th graders) who reported engaging in more social comparison and feedback-seeking behavior online (e.g., “I use electronic interaction to see what others think about how I look”; “I use electronic interaction to compare my life with other people’s lives”) experienced more depressive symptoms a year later, even when accounting for earlier levels of depression as well as concurrent technology use. Moreover, this positive association was particularly strong for girls and for students who were less popular with their peers at school. Given that profiles on social networking sites often portray positively distorted portrayals of users, teens who engage in social comparisons online may come to feel like “everyone is happier than me,” and this feeling may be especially pronounced for teens who are already less popular among their peers.