Living in the 21st century requires one to stay current with latest technological advancements. Ever since the development of social networking sites, people are now able to create a carefully-crafted identity for themselves. This has led psychologists to question how well these online personalities match the person in front of the computer. The innovative branch of media psychology looks into how social networking portrays individuals and initiates human interactions within a society.
A basic question is how well are people able to get to know each other through social networking sites? In a research study, Psychster Inc. explored characteristics of profile pictures and their association with impression. Using a specially designed social networking website, http://www.YouJustGetMe.com, Psychster analyzed 1,316 first impressions of profile owners who had posted photographs as part of a complete profile (Steele, Evans, & Green, 2008). The results suggest that photographs in which the profile owners were smiling, outdoors, and shown with others were associated with higher impression agreement. Some results implied that other aspects of the photographs, such as head covering and weight, also affected impression agreement depending on the gender of the profile owner (Steele, Evans, & Green, 2008). Overall, this research suggests that visitors to online profiles are likely to view the profile owners just as the owners view themselves, even if they have never met before.
In another study, University of Texas psychologist Samuel Gosling measured the correlation between personality on and off line of 133 undergraduates with Facebook profiles. Gosling discovered that students’ personalities were accurately represented online, contrary ...
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...orth 1000 words? Photo characteristics associated with personality impression agreement. Psychster, Retrieved from http://psychster.com/library/SteeleEvansGreen_ICWSM09.pdf
Suler, J. Ph.D. (2004). The online disinhibition effect. Cyberpsychology & Behavior. Volume 7, Number 3. Retrieved from http://lacomunidad.elpais.com/blogfiles/apuntes-cientificos-desde-el-mit/71994_Suler.pdf
UOPX Writer Network (2010). The psychology of social media addiction. University of Phoenix: College of Social Sciences. Retrieved from http://www.phoenix.edu/colleges_divisions/social-sciences/articles/2010/08/the-psychology-of-social-media-addiction.html
Wilson, C. (2007). Staying true to themselves. Student Facebook profiles, it turns out, match the real thing. U.S. News and World Report. Retrieved from http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070708/16facebook.htm
Many young girls are aware that what they are doing on the internet can be seen by others and it can lead to positive or negative reactions from their peers. Orenstein is concerned about younger girls and women and how social media could take a bad turn on things for them. She wants us to know that social media can damage one’s reputation depending on how it is used. Girls post pictures of themselves on the internet in order to attract positive attention from their peers, as well as others who are considered as strangers. They want to be able to seek the attention from others in order to create an audience. As a result of this, Facebook is then used as a “social norm”, meaning that people can judge and form opinions based off of what is seen in an online profile. Orenstein explains that she isn’t trying to put technology in a bad light, because she uses it to keep in contact with her friends and family. She’s mindful about what she puts on the internet, while young adults are making their identities into a
In our age of endless involvement in social media, we often see that people know online aren’t what they seem. Some social media users don’t know that same people we follow or are friends with on Facebook are controlling the way they are being perceived by other users. It’s a new social phenomenon born online and isn’t taken noticed by the everyday users, but there had been movies and stories about it. The topic of identity on social media is being bought up more often in the worldwide conversion about what social media means to us. In the essay “Impression Management on Facebook and Twitter” by Annalise Sigona seeks to inform readers and social media users about the unknowns about the impression and the way user present themselves in social media. When reading this essay, I was introduced to new term, and something I had vague understanding for.
Maintaining an extended metaphor to compare social media profiles to self-portraits, Rosen leads her audience to the conclusion that as social media grows in popularity, friendships will be increasingly devalued and redefined. Using a combination of rhetorical questions and scholarly sources, Christine Rosen’s sarcastic tone works to keep the reader engaged as she explores the future of social interaction and self-identity as shaped by virtual culture.
Topic: Addiction to social media General Purpose: To persuade Specific purpose: To persuade my audience that social media is hurting us mentally and our social lives. Thesis: Social media can cause serious problems to you and your health, so we need to put addiction to social media to rest. I. Introduction A. Attention-getter: The ages of 55 and 64 year olds who use social media fell “worried or uncomfortable” when they can’t access any type of social media accounts (Wright, 2015).
As older siblings, friends, and cousins were denied position at school and in the work force, we realized that adults and employers had found Facebook. Our uncensored character was on display for future bosses, colleges, etc. and they were there to stay. Instead of references being the test of character for a job, it was the online identity that determined whether or not the application got even a second glance. In light of this revelation, we changed. Our Facebooks no longer reflected our true selves, but rather the person that we thought colleges and employers should see. Much like hiding our dirty laundry from prying eyes in the halls of high school, we could no longer wear our proverbial hearts on our internet sleeves, for the future was at stake. Much like what had once been the Old West, the internet was now connected with railroads—each leading back to the offline person. Tame and orderly.
Special, W.P., & Li-Barber, K.T. (2012). Self-disclosure and student satisfaction with Facebook. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(2), 624-630.
This paper aims to explore the different reasons behind people having different personas in Twitter and real-life through a look at how the social networking site provides a unique opportunity for self...
When someone “friends you” on Facebook, it doesn’t automatically mean that you have some special relationship with that person. In reality it really doesn’t mean that you now have the intimacy and familiarity that you have with some offline friends. And research shows that people don’t commonly accept friend requests from or send them to people they don’t really know, favoring instead to have met a person at least once (Jones). A key part of interpersonal communication is impression management, and some methods of new media allow people more tools for presenting themselves than others. SNSs in many ways are podiums for self-presentation. Even more than blogs, web pages, and smartphones, the atmosphere on a SNS like Facebook and Twitter enables self-disclosure in a focused way and permits others who have access to ones profile to see their other friends. This merging of different groups of people that include close friends, family, acquaintances, and friends of friends, colleagues, and strangers can present issues for self-presentation. Once people have personal, professional, and academic contacts in their Facebook network the growing diversity of social media networks creates new challenges as people try to engage in impression management
Rosen, Christine. “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism.” What Matters In America. Third Edition. Gary Goshgarian and Kathryn Goodfellow. New Jersey: Pearson, 2012. 52-60. Print.
"Psychology of Cyberspace - The Online Disinhibition Effect." Psychology of Cyberspace - The Online Disinhibition Effect. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2014.
Social media has become an extremely powerful and useful tool that enables people in a modern society to effortlessly interact and socialize with each other via the internet; however, there is an extremely dark and little known side of social media: addiction. Social media has the potential to become extremely addictive to its users. The addictive nature of social media may intensely interfere with users daily obligations in the real world, which may make a recovery process necessary in order to quell the powerful addiction.
The influence of rapidly growing social media, television, and the internet has taken the world by storm in recent years. Its fascinating development over the years is nothing short of remarkable when you take into account that 20 years ago, only 16 million people in the world were "online", compared to the 2 billion that roam on the internet now. Modern communications technology has now become so familiar and utterly banal, yet there is still this tingling sensation when one receives a text from a love interest on Facebook or WhatsApp. Human identity, the idea that defines each and every one of us, is on the verge of being radically defined by social media. This essay will provide a balanced outlook on the positive and negative effects that social media have had on the behaviour and thinking on humans. The topic is a very controversial one, but the purpose of this is to help readers formulate a view on whether the arguments in this essay benefit society in general, or whether they harm the well-being of the human brain and detach us from reality.
Have you ever noticed people acting differently over social media than they do during face to face interactions? A large amount of social media users have reported noticing someone they know displaying a different personality over social media than they present during face to face interactions. Part of this claim is that people create these different personalities when posting to social media because the environmental stress of being able to see the other people whom they are connecting with is no longer there, therefore they feel the freedom to present themselves differently than they do during interpersonal interactions. People often alter facts about themselves as well as their personality characteristics while on social media in order
One of the main reasons why social media has positively affected our society is because of how it has made communicating with people much easier. “Today, four out of five active internet users maintain at least one social media profile” (Moe, 3). Using these websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and etc., people talk about everything with anyone from what they are planning to do, also what they are eating and much more (Moe, 24). Also we can also send private messages to other users of these websites about personal m...
Social media, a quickly growing and popular knowledge outlet, can become dangerously addictive if the user lacks self-control. There are so many wonderful outcomes from the invention of social media. The biggest being how quickly news can spread. Anyone can share the news that they desire with a few taps on a screen. The fault in this action though, is that false testimonies can be spread just as quickly as true ones. The question is, does the positive outweigh the negative enough for a person to proceed with using social media? Without this innovative creation, though, communication would be dull and boring, so by all means, social media should be used.