Human Need to Belong
There are many expressions which denote the human propensity to group together which demonstrates the need to belong to a group. You may be familiar with the expression “birds of a feather flock together”. This expression rings true to all of us because humans have a need to meet each other, eat together, live together, play together, fight together and generally seek each other’s company for various reasons. Those reasons can be for emotional support, social support, education, recreation, social comparison and validation (Leary, Kelly, Cottrell & Schreindorfer, 2013). These can all be very good and beneficial things. They can help us grow, discover who we are, offer a forum for self-expression or find safety, relaxation and rest. The human species requires these activities to have a well-rounded and fulfilled life but there are things which both promote or prevent them from occurring. Some personalities are more likely to socialize while others have less of a need. Extroverts for example tend to have little problem finding a compatible social group while introverts may have less need or are less likely to even look. The big 5 personality traits can be an excellent indicator of who both need to and will seek and develop larger social circles but everyone will seek social circles of varying sizes. Social media has become a tremendous outlet for the development for such varying social circles.
Socialism and Homophily
Social media is a wonderful tool for people to develop the social circles which best meet their needs. The needs of the individual will drive the size and composition of these circles based on a variety of promoting or limiting factors. One of the most contributory contributors to a social circle is Purity or morality (Dehghani, Johnson, Hoover, et. al, 2016). Purity is three times more likely to determine social grouping than any other factor with safety and fairness following. Only loyalty and authority were negatively correlated. With the readily available network of social opportunities and the computing prowess of social media, networks can become as large and refined as a person would like. This accumulation of likeminded peers leads to further homophily as people continue to find more peace, confidence and security without the conflict of opposition or the confrontation of offensive or emotionally conflicting statements or images. Affirmation grows with each likeminded post which receives more and more likes from a growing network which promotes self-esteem and a growing confidence. This then satisfies the need to belong (Leary, Kelly, Cottrell & Schreindorfer, 2013).
Likes Beget Likes
Social media is getting stronger by building larger individual homophilic networks. The AI (artificial intelligence) required to accomplish this is constantly being refined by combining user participation with pure data processing capabilities (Carah & Angus, 2018). Each like or page search adds data to a database surrounding an individuals personal profile which then focuses consilient information towards them. Whether this information is religiously or morally based, special interests or familial the individual continues to encapsulate themselves in an ever-refined cocoon of supportive and non-offensive information which becomes complicit in higher returns. Social media becomes a happy place where even acquaintances become recognized as friends and friends become indispensable.
References
Carah, N., & Angus, D. (2018). Algorithmic brand culture: Participatory labour, machine learning and branding on social media. Media, Culture & Society, 40(2), 178–194. doi:10.1177/0163443718754648
Dehghani, M., Johnson, K., Hoover, J., Sagi, E., Garten, J., Parmar, N. J., . . . Graham, J. (2016). Purity homophily in social networks. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 145(3), 366–375. doi:10.1037/xge0000139
Leary, M. R., Kelly, K. M., Cottrell, C. A., & Schreindorfer, L. S. (2013). Construct validity of the need to belong scale: Mapping the nomological network. Journal of Personality Assessment, 95(6), 610–624. doi:10.1080/00223891.2013.819511