“If Nobody ‘Likes’ Something, It Isn’t Even Worth Saying”
The Happiness Effect by Donna Freitas explores the world of social media from the perspective of college students on today’s campuses. Over two years Freitas conducted surveys and interviews with over 700 students at 13 different colleges across the United States, discussing everything from relationships, religion and politics to selfies, smartphones and self branding. All of it was in relation to social media and how the the first generation to grow up with it as a constant in their lives is impacted.
Freitas, a professor, a former Student Affairs professional and a young adult fiction author, was motivated to being this research by her engagement with young adults through her work. She describes herself as “not a big social media person…” but could see how the culture was affecting the lives of her students. She felt drawn to the subject to help herself, parents, teachers and the students themselves understand the pressures social media has placed on this generation.
The book is laid out in eleven chapters, each examining a different theme, from cyberbullying to selfies. Freitas tells the story of several of her student subjects in each chapter, pulling quotes that pertain to the theme and providing some of her own questions and analyses of the information and opinions they talk to her about. For the purposes of this report I’ll just tell you about a few of the stories that I found most interesting.
Emma starts off the book. She is a sorority girl at a southern “Greek-dominated university”. She’s hungover but somehow still conventionally beautiful. She has standing in her sorority and near perfect grades in her double major studies, basically the girl we all loved to hate in school. But underneath she’s pretty unhappy and is very forthcoming with her feelings in her interview with Freitas. Emma is the first, but definitely not the last student in the book, to say that social media is all about getting ‘likes’. She believes that no one is their “authentic self” online but feels that she must subscribe to the same behaviour in order to keep her social standing. She won’t post anything even remotely inflammatory.
Emma is highly monitored on social media, by her sorority, by her school and by her peers. Both sororities and universities in the US often give social media workshops to their students and making sure their posts reflect the image they want to project. Emma's sorority even has secret moderators on all social media platforms who will comment in code on posts that their girls must take down. The result of all this is one very exhausted and overwhelmed student.
Rob, a track team member at a Catholic university, describes himself as “a very active user” when it comes to social media. He seems to love it. Facebook is his platform of choice and as Freitas continues their conversation Rob reveals that he enjoys the “ego boost” that comes from using it. Rob is all about ‘likes”. Likes are his main motivation for being on social media. But at what cost?
His quest for ‘likes’ goes as far as deciding whether or not to post something based on how many ‘likes’ he thinks it might get. He also admits to deleting a post once because it didn’t get any likes.
While Rob seems to enjoy his social media usage, Freitas points out his nervous demeanour several times though chapter, wondering if maybe he feels like has to stay positive about it.
Aamir is looking forward to a life in politics. Because of this he tries his best to keep a spotless social media record. While he is one of the few student Freitas met that will actually post about politics, he does so with restrictions in both choice of platform and topics. He will only post to Twitter and describes his tweets as “pretty dry”. Every post he makes has to consider the risk to his character and he’s been crafting this careful image since high school.
Aamir admits that he wasn’t always so vigilant. His middle school days saw more profanity and joking around on social media but that soon changed at the prompting of high school teachers and advisors. When Freitas mentions the common practice of “cleaning up” one’s Facebook account by going back and deleting old posts, his interest is piqued, clearly hopeful to erase the past and clean his slate.
Cherese is in a rush and seems somewhat unwilling to talk to Freitas at first but she fulfills her promise anyway. When the topic of Facebook comes around she makes a startling revelation. Cherese has 17 lists of friends on Facebook. (For those unaware, a friend list is a way to separate your friends on Facebook into categories. You can then set a post so it can only be viewed by that list of people) One or two lists seems reasonable but Cherese feels it is necessary to have 17 and each one continues to get bigger. Every time she posts something that garners a less than positive response from a friend she then adds that person to a list that will no longer see her posts of that type. Cherese is, like Aamir, one of the few students Freitas speaks with who will get somewhat politic on their social media accounts. But rather than deal with the differing opinions and ideals of her Baptist family and her less religious friends she relegates them all to only see the posts from her they will like.
These four students are only the tip of the iceberg in The Happiness Effect. Though their motivations for being on social media somewhat differ they all strive for the same thing, to appear happy. Freitas’ so called ‘Happiness Effect’ theory is alive and well among these 700 plus American college students.
Overall I can probably say I enjoyed reading this book. Seems like a less than convincing recommendation, I know. But the feeling comes from the fact that this book made me ponder and face some of my own motivations for using and engaging with social media. I will admit that I was a reluctant reader at first. I felt defensive, mostly because this is an fairly in-depth look at my generation, the Millennial generation, a generation who is frequently bashed by those who came before us. We’ve all had to put up our defences a little every time a new article or book comes out by another non-millennial that purports to tell us all about ourselves, but usually ends up just quoting the same insulting tropes over and over. But as I read on I began to find similarities in the stories of these students to my own life.
One of the main themes that is continually mentioned, by almost every student Freitas meets, is the urge to compare yourself to others on social media. While this notion is not new to anyone (who hasn’t compared themselves, physically, career wise, mentally etc, to others in their life?), the constant stream of posts on social media and the frequency with which people check their accounts, make the comparisons ubiquitous. I am no exception to this rule. I have and still do feel the pressure to make comparisons of my life to my friend’s lives as their posts appear in my feed. And along with most of the students, I too can realize on an intellectual level that these comparisons are unhealthy, but it does not keep me from doing so. I think the point where I differ, is in what kinds of things I tend to notice and compare. I’ve found, as I’ve gotten older, my inclination to focus on physical attributes has lessened considerably, but instead I find myself envying posts about career victories, travel plans and engagements.
On the other end of the stick, I do, shamefully, find myself revelling in my own victories a little more. Being able to post about my own career successes and such when I know several people from high school are present on my Facebook does give me a little ego boost. I want them to know how well I’m doing.
But while I very much related to that recurring theme in Freitas’ book, it’s the main theory I couldn’t fully get behind. The Happiness Effect does not resonate with me. I can see and maybe somewhat understand where these students are coming from and how they’ve been taught to appear happy at all costs, but I cannot say I have experienced this myself. This is where trying to define an entire generation has failed.
As someone born in 1988 I am considered to be pretty smack dab in the middle of the Millennial generation (generally defined as early 1980s to early 2000s) and therefore the most likely to embody what it is to be a Millennial. Yet I found myself confused at many of the feelings and habits of the students Freitas interviewed. Most of these students are only four to eight years younger than me (Freitas having conducted the interviews in 2014–2015) but when you look at the rise of social media in high schools, particularly Facebook, you’ll see that the cutoff for Facebook being available to high school students is right after I graduated. I feel that this is a major difference between the first half of the Millennial generation and the second, enough so that it almost makes sense to split the generation in to two at that point.
University is often seen as a place where you grow into the person you’re going to be. However, I would argue that high school is really the beginning of that growth, especially when it comes to discovering your individuality and how to socialize as that individual. Access to social media tools, such as Facebook, would drastically change how you learn to socialize. The students Freitas met grew up with Facebook as their main tool of socialization and therefore developed a particular set of skills or habits to deal with others online, whether those skills are healthy or not. Myself and everyone born before me were not socialized on Facebook and so did not develop those habits, or at least not to the same degree.
I conducted my own little survey of my Facebook friends to see who felt they had a think a lot about what they post on social media and how it affects their lives and also about whether they felt the need to only post happy things, like the students in the book.
The results surprised me. While I myself do not feel the need to create a happy persona for my social profiles, in fact I am an advocate of posting rants, asks for help, political debates, etc, a few of my friends (as you can see above) do feel the need to somewhat gear their posting to happier topics. But the difference between the students in Freitas’ book and my friends is the extremes some of the students would go to to make sure they appeared happy and that, I feel, is all because of the gap within the Millennial generation.
In the end, while I don’t think The Happiness Effect is representational of my entire generation, I am convinced that the pressures on the younger half imposed by social media are very real and somewhat disturbing. My question now is, how we can help future generations avoid the same pitfalls while still accessing the benefits of all that social media has to offer?