Social Media; FLOCKIN US TOGETHER
By Kristen Baldwin

Desired Connection:
Today social media is one of the primary ways of human interaction. From birth we as humans crave social interaction and acceptance, first from our parents and family, and then as we mature from peers and finally from a potential life partner and family we would create ourselves through children. Social media is our newest way of connecting and feeling that social acceptance. About two decades ago, up and coming social media seemed interesting to many people, but more as a free way to look up people from your past. No one expected it to become the forefront of social interaction as it has.
Now social media is a driving force in how we as people feel accepted. No matter what we share, even our saddest moment seeing that someone hit the like button or shared our story on their feed brings us a sense of kinship. Each thumbs up or now emoji brings us a sense of being understood, so much so that in the younger generations numerous individuals base much of their time solely around their social media interaction, even with their families. We are seeking to be understood, to be supported and to be accepted. That one little thumbs up, or hashtag gives us all of that. That new friend request or follower on twitter brings us more comfort now than the old days of all night coffee conversations at the Denny’s.

Flocking Together:
Now there is the old saying birds of a feather flock together. This concept is known as homophily, which mean to join or connect with those that are like minded or love the same things we do. Now most people start out on social media platforms friending family members and people they already know. However, then they like to start following things that they like, perhaps a clothing line or a favorite band. Then as they pay closer attention to the message boards or shares, and interactions of others that like these same pages they will begin to develop the idea that they like the thoughts of another follower, and although this person is a complete stranger and can live half way around the world from them; they are happy to reach out and make a connection with someone they find like-minded to themselves. In fact many social media forums and electronically based social platforms have a backdrop development that intentionally helps you connect with others that are similar to you (Harris, & Aboujaoude, 2016).
This started huge in the gaming world, first on computer based games like World of Warcraft and XboX live, and then became a bigger part of Facebook and Instagram about ten years into their development. Now most social media platforms have a “things you may like” “people you may know” and “stories you should see” section as you scroll through your personal page. Now we count these individual’s that we cyber meet among our best of friends, we feel their support on another level; because just like us they will spend 2 hours liking all 5000 pictures on the Facebook page of their celebrity crush, or spend 70 hours a week in missions with us on Halo. That level of understanding, of connection brings an overwhelming sense of acceptance, because one of our biggest fears as people is that we are alone in our neurosis. Finding someone similar someone with habits similar to our own makes us feel more at ease, it also gives us someone to turn to when we feel no one else will understand something we are going through, which is something every individual needs from time to time (Wohn, Carr, & Hayes, 2016).

How Social Media Helps Flock Us Together:
Now that there are no longer locality limitations on social interaction, we as individuals have a virtual life or cyber identity that gives us the ability to connect beyond the limits of the past. This interestingly enough has opened up a great amount of psychosocial theories on what that would mean. Therefor there has currently been a lot of research on who we as individuals would connect with when distance and people we see daily are no longer limiting factors. If we would befriend people we have never met and may never actually meet based on the fact that they like what we like (Wohn, Carr, & Hayes, 2016). Although it was not initial as a way of improving social media platforms programmers began to input algorithms into social media forums that would bring up topics and articles and websites individuals liked based on the types of things they would follow, the people they would search, and the items they would post about. These algorithms work in the background and calculate the likelihood of an individual’s response to help them connect further in the virtual world and make ties to virtual communities (Bisgin, 2010). Now when the factors that govern these social communities is analyzed by psychology and sociology researchers it is found that micro and macro patterns used in these algorithms do help individual’s connect and build interactions with people outside their social norms based on their love of the same topic. When compared side by side to virtual connection that was more random like the chat rooms of the early 2000’s it is far more likely that the interactions developed will be easier to sustain, and lead to eventual face to face meetings. Basically social media has found a way to help us make friends that we can maintain as friends because it helps us find people that like that thing we do, and when we feel supported and find people who are different but like the same things it is easier to develop long term sustainable friendships (Bisgin, 2010).

References
Bisgin, H. (2010) Investigating Homophily In Online Social Networks, IEEE Computer Society; 2010
IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology
Harris, K. M., & Aboujaoude, E. (2016). Online friendship, romance, and sex: Properties and associations of the Online Relationship Initiation Scale. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 19(8), 487–493.
Wohn, D. Y., Carr, C. T., & Hayes, R. A. (2016). How affective is a “like”?: The effect of paralinguistic digital affordances on perceived social support. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 19(9), 562–566.

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