What does it really mean to be LIKED in today's society? I’m sure the majority of you have instantly linked it to the virtual ‘likes’ that you receive when posting on instagram… I mean certainly did. According to that PEW Research centre, 92 percent of American teenagers go online daily. Thats millions - if not billions - of us on networks like Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat… obsessing over our virtual identities! The truth is, our generation has given a whole new meaning to being ‘liked’, and perhaps even tarnishing our self-worth in the process.
When social media platforms first surfaced, nobody anticipated that it would turn into the global phenomenon it is today. In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg introduced Facebook with the intention of creating a platform to socially interact and communicate. As of 2017, there are 1.86 billion active users on facebook and 2/3 of people online, have social media accounts … these are all people searching for the same thing. Validation. I like to consider it as our generation’s virtual playground -- a catalyst in today's society.
I guess the big question is why?
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Every single one of us -- it’s human nature. We are all desperate for it… We crave it.. The satisfaction that we receive from making our friends laugh, or receiving positive feedback from a test can all be easily replicated online. Sixty-two percent of people worldwide admit that they have a better self-esteem when receiving positive social-media feedback. The likes, comments, followers, profile views have become a way for us to measure our value. When we are online there no longer is that sense of individuality, we are all looking to be approved of, to ‘fit in’. Something as little as having only 10 likes is frowned upon and gaining another 100 followers is considered a milestone. With all this pressure, posting on social media has become less of a way to be expressive and more of a way to prove your self-worth to billions of people you may not
Modern technology is a huge cause on why people have started to care a lot of what other people think of them. Now we have all of these new social media sites and apps such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. All of these websites and apps have likes, follows or comments. All
People demand to be acknowledged the likes they get satisfy that need. The more active you are on social media you are the more popular you are or so it seems. You will be considered friendlier and will be invited to more events. Some people get so mesmerized by their online profile that they put this before their family or friends something simple like going on a hike may not be for exercise but a photo shoot for the perfect picture. Murphy also says that people can get obsessed with the number of likes they get. They are willing to do anything for a picture even if it means endangering the people around
Society today has put an influence on being popular, defined as being “regarded with favor, approval, or affection by people in general” (Dictionary). Popularity in today’s society is ultimately dictated by our media, more specifically Social Media. Social Media, commonly used by teenagers, warps how we act, dictates our appearance, and gets us to value retrospectively unimportant ideals, in order to reach a status of popularity. An unrealistic picture of popularity is painted by the Social Media teenagers devour. This desire to be popular, as well as how popularity and Social Media can corrupt a person is expressed in the book, Be More Chill, by Ned Vizzini. Be More Chill follows Jeremy Herre, a high schooler who’s desire to become popular
The society today is extremely affected by social media and the constantly evolving technology. People are becoming increasingly narcissistic, changing themselves online solely get more ‘likes’. Our behaviour on social media is to a great extent risk free, where loving in the real world is full of risks. In his speech ‘Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts’, the American novelist and essayist Jonathan Franzen addresses these risk free narcissistic tendencies, asking whether the risks of love in real life are really worth it.
Social Media has evolved from a simple system of communication into an addictive force. Generation Z wakes up in the morning and immediately checks Instagram, they check Snapchat between classes, and scroll on Twitter right before bed. No longer do people wake up to see the sky, instead they wake up to see the cold, created world of social media. Every picture a calculated move to portray the world as utopian. To reach this level of happiness they seek more likes as if one more follower, one more like would finally allow them to experience bliss.
As humans we have come to the point technologically where we could send messages to our relatives in a blink of an eye. Not only have we advanced technologically, but equally socially in a former fashion relevant to our advances.Although we have gone through drastic changes, one thing that hasn’t changed in our species was our desire for popularity, take our nations youth for example .It is natural for teenagers to reach a peak of popularity and back in the day this was done by going to football games and parties.,To bring it back to current times this could be achieved from the inside of a room through social media, where they gain Instafame through Instagram. We as a a world are more connected more than ever before and this is due to our
Henceforth, while participating in online interactions, individuals find it effortless to create telling stories about themselves that rarely accurately describe the reality of their lives. Society has often turned to social media to validate themselves by the means of likes and shares. Recent studies calculated on average individuals devote 135 minutes of their time to social media every day. Research has shown that the more time individuals spend surfing and posting content on social media networking sites, the higher their levels of anxiety is. New evidence suggests that whether individuals distribute their time on social media by viewing other people’s content or manipulating their own, the excessive use of social media engagement subjects users to be exposed to severe mental
Today’s society revolves around social media and impacts each person in a different way. The occurrence of giving and receiving “likes” and the desire of today’s teens to increase views, shares, comments, and likes are not only helping improve someone’s profile, but also of the brands that they like. As companies observe the data collected, the social media marketers work together to carefully turn “likes” into profit for the brand. People have no idea what the value of liking something is. The more teens that utilize social media, the more money companies are likely to make.
Splashed all across social media are the images of what we are conditioned to believe is beautiful, is sexy, is wanted, is perfection, and this is what we strive towards. We waste our time on superficial and trivial things to achieve this ideal, this idea of perfection. Once we believe we have become what society wants us to be we post about it. We post photo after photo on social media, awaiting a response from the public. We rely on social media for validation and quantify our worth through likes and comments and one to ten ratings, oblivious to the fact that these are just numbers and they don't mean anything. People now refuse to break free from the mold, we simply follow trends and seek praise for doing so. If we continue to only praise conformity who will want to share their individuality? Social media has hindered our ability to form and share unique ideas. Even now, some criticize the idea of being ‘mainstream’ simply because they believe it is more appealing to be different or strange, but now with so many people aiming to differ for the ‘norm’ so they are not mainstream they are following a trend while attempting
Naturally, we all have the need to be accepted. This is one of our fundamental desires. We were not created to be alone so logically we seek approval of others and long to be a part of our peer’s world and they in ours. Social media has turned this primary desire belong and reduced it down to likes and retweets. This continual need for validation, when sought online, may be extremely dangerous because we are attempting to define and establish the value of who we are. This causes us to take greater external measures to increase this misdirected classification of our
My first experience with Facebook was back in high school. I associated it with regular mobile phone chatting applications. Most of my real life friends were members of Facebook, and they encouraged me to join the social website and make a “friend request” so that we could get connected. It was an intriguing experience because I had just heard rumors that it was an awesome chatting platform. The article by Ian Daly “Virtual Popularity Isn 't Cool—It 's Pathetic” (Daly) presents arguments and situations that have been closely connected to my experience with social media over the past several years that I have been an active member of several social media sites. This personal essay will show the link between the arguments from the article and my experience as a user of social media. In my opinion, these experiences likely relate to those of many other social media users.
In this day and age, many individuals simply cannot go without some sort of socialization. Specifically speaking, most participate in online social networking sites. The most popular and used one is commonly known as Facebook. Facebook was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. By 2007, Facebook had over 21 million users, adding up to 1.6 billion page views every single day. The typical user spends over twenty minutes per day on Facebook and two thirds of the users log in every day at least once. It is not questionable as to why many people have a Facebook account. Facebook is generally efficient, easy for socialization, and not difficult to manage. Most organizations are affiliated with Facebook, as “almost 22,000 organizations had Facebook directories,” as of November 2006. A year after that in 2007, Facebook was named the seventh most popular website (Ellison 1). However, with anything well known, many oppose to using Facebook and hold criticism against the popular network. There are many flaws in the website and the relationships it starts online. Facebook is risking dangerous activities, ignoring privacy laws, and demeaning healthy socialization.
These things have become so common that not having them almost makes it seem like there is something missing. Because of features such as these, it is incredibly easy to share every aspect of what we are reading, doing, eating and listening to with everyone in our social networks. While this has meant incredible advances in the way we interact with our world, it has also fundamentally changed the way our social relationships are created and sustained. Social medial led users to have false impression of others and changed our feelings. Because social media users tend to only show the most positive aspects of their lives, social media users have a false sense of reality when it comes to how they seem themselves, how others see them and how they see other people. “It is not difficult to say that social media effect our perception of others” (Goshgarian213).
On February 4, 2004, Facebook was launched and with it the epidemic of social media impact crept in its shadows. Society was revolutionized by a new era of social interaction, where individuals could connect through media channels and share their unique brand with the immediate world. Just two years later Twitter was launched, and soon after Instagram was the newest contender in the running. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are just three of the top social media outlets that millennials crave. In the world of social media, anyone can be whomever they desire, and fame has reached feasible accessibility. Through accessibility, moral standards are quickly diminished and the platform for psychological impact has reached an all time high. Social
In the present day, new technology such as social media has taken root in society’s daily life. Many people are opposed to it because it is rapidly changing the standards of society by broadening social horizons and are afraid it will change how people view others and themselves for the worse. Contrary to this belief, people gain higher self-esteem and better images of themselves through social media and other various forms of social networking.