Social Media Brings Compatible Strangers Together

Denise Monet
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read
Image from: chemoforbeginners.com

In this day and age and the popularity of social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Instagram and so many others people are able to virtually interact with people from all over the world. Lee-Won, Herzog, and Park (2015) state that the psychological need to form and maintain positive relationships within their interpersonal interactions with others drive people to seek out SNS’s. Social media interaction can also stimulate an enhanced sense of well-being as Facebook users can receive social support by directly sharing their important life events (ILE). This access provides them the opportunity to have an increase in diversity and heterogeneity of information as well as support and encouragement ((Bevan, Cummings, Kubiniec, Mogannam, Price, and Todd, 2015).

In order to build this connection people must first present their “true” selves” to the best of their abilities in order to form genuine relationships with strangers. As a result, these authentic and true to themselves individuals who choose to share who they are on Facebook and other SNS’s can experience the same psychological outcomes as if they were sharing themselves in a traditional offline interaction (Grieve and Watkinson (2016).

There are some individuals who lack the social skills that are needed in order to be able to share their true selves when involved in face to face interaction. They may be shy, they may have anxiety around other people or they just may be uncomfortable with public speaking. People who are lacking in social skills may see social networking sites like Facebook as a comfortable and safe means to connect and communicate. In this way, they are able to build relationships with people in order to create homophily in their lives. Homophily states that similar individuals associate more with each other than with others (Bisgin, Agarwal, and Xu, 2010). In the age of social media, developing homophily is extremely easy as it has been proven that similar groups of people come together to form communities or “groups” on social media platforms.

Some of these individuals prefer to share their true selves in an internet-based interaction versus a face to face interaction. The drawback with this is that these individuals can then develop a preference for online interaction versus face to face interaction because of the minimal risk involved. As a result, these people may develop issues such as social anxiety and lack of social skills needed to participate in face to face interactions.

In order to bring like-minded people and their interests together SNS’s use their platforms to create algorithms. These algorithms have one job-to show people the content that is relevant to them. For businesses and marketers, algorithms are a very important part of engagement with their audience (Agrawal, 2016). Agrawal (2016) says that Instagram will probably become the most successful in their endeavors with algorithms as they have decided to make relevancy the driving force behind what their users see on their news feeds instead of hiding posts like Facebook.

REFERENCES

Bisgin, H., Agarwal, N., & Xu, X. (2010). Investigating Homophily in Online Social Networks. 2010 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology. doi:10.1109/wi-iat.2010.61

Agrawal, A. (2016, April 21). What Do Social Media Algorithms Mean For You? Retrieved July 27, 2017, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ajagrawal/2016/04/20/what-do-social-media-algorithms-mean-for-you/#4f4534a7a515

Bevan, J. L., Cummings, M. B., Kubiniec, A., Mogannam, M., Price, M., & Todd, R. (2015). How Are Important Life Events Disclosed on Facebook? Relationships with Likelihood of Sharing and Privacy. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking,18(1), 8–12. doi:10.1089/cyber.2014.0373

Lee-Won, R. J., Herzog, L., & Park, S. G. (2015). Hooked on Facebook: The Role of Social Anxiety and Need for Social Assurance in Problematic Use of Facebook. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking,18(10), 567–574. doi:10.1089/cyber.2015.0002

Grieve, R., & Watkinson, J. (2016). The Psychological Benefits of Being Authentic on Facebook. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking,19(7), 420–425. doi:10.1089/cyber.2016.0010

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