Connecting to Social Media, beware of overuse and self comparison towards your followers.
Contributing Factors for establishing communication on social media and influential aspects for creating homophily.
In my previous blog post (https://medium.com/@chashinbeaver/digitally-connected-to-find-like-minded-friends-f2ab3fc54da9), I discussed homophily which is behavior observed a group of like-minded individuals will express during communication. To keep your followers’ interests is to briefly examine followers’ pages for content you can relate to but provide explanations for content that may not be relatable to many followers and to possibly attract new social media acquaintances. The individual and followers should be comfortable with trusting that all content should be confirmed by reliable sources and remain available and politely responsive to constructive criticism and other suggestions.
Algorithms and Cognitive Biases’ impacts on Isolation and the enhancement of Homophily
Researchers are conducting further examinations of how isolation occurs in adolescents from their constant social media usage and vice versa. Age, gender, relationship status, household annual income, and academic progression are the measuring factors to can lead to successfully establishing homophily and positively contributing to the audiences’ well-being. Individuals in their adolescence and young adults are considered the two age groups that will seek making connections to grow them into relationships. Some find seeking others with similar cognitive biases’ difficult to because followers feel unsuccessful in their lives or unable to fully relate to the cognitive biases exposed during communication. Some users require offline interactions rather than seeing ‘likes’ or any additional notifications to signify agreement and understanding from followers.
The current Facebook algorithm aims to provide engaging content and meaningful interactions by placing comments, reactions, and shares at the top of other follower’s newsfeed, and allows users to remain updated with the comment activity of other users or and groups being followed for its featured content. “If what you post is not freshly produced or doesn’t receive certain amount of likes and reshares in a certain time (based on the secret rules Facebook sets) your posts won’t be treated as worthy of another people’s gaze” (Derakhshan, 2016).
Prevention of negative outcomes from using social media
Users of social media platforms that mentioned their average time was more than 2 hours everyday have twice the risk of developing a perceived isolation (Hobson, 2017). Social isolation caused from social media is a major contributor developing symptoms of mild depression which may lead to increased chances of conducting risky behavior that will increase the duration of the illness (Pawlowski, 2018). Middle-aged adults are more likely to communicate more via social media because the younger generations are more physically active visiting friends and discovering the world. Some remedies include limiting alerts, decreasing the current number of social media platforms used daily, promote face-to-face contact amongst friends and local family members, and place strict limitations on social media use to a minimal 30 minutes every evening.
References:
Derakhshan, H. (2016). Facebook algorithms — we don’t need to let them control us. DW. Retrieved from https://www.dw.com/en/facebook-algorithms-we-dont-need-to-let-them-control-us/a-19320669
Hobson, K. (2017). Feeling Lonely? Too Much Time on Social Media May Be Why. NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/06/518362255/feeling-lonely-too-much-time-on-social-media-may-be-why
Pawlokwi, A. (2018). Feeling lonely? How to stop social media from making you feel isolated. NBC Universal. Retrieved from https://www.today.com/home/brady-bunch-stars-reunite-tv-home-new-hgtv-show-t141095
Warner, C. (2018). This is exactly how social media algorithms work today. Skyward Inc. Retrieved from https://www.skyword.com/contentstandard/marketing/this-is-exactly-how-social-media-algorithms-work-today/
