Social Capital Makes People Narcissistic

Social Capital Makes People Narcissistic

It feels good when many people like or share a picture you post, but does this make a person more selfish? I would argue that social capital makes people more egoistical. The more social capital a person has the more “popular” they are. As a society, we value social capital; we crave the need to fit in and to be accepted. People are longing to belong and gain attention from a lot of people to make them feel that they belong. Posting to social media, makes us feel good about ourselves especially if the posts gets a lot of likes and shares. Social media can make a person egotistical because if they are only posting content for the sole purpose to get likes, it reinforces the notion that people only post for attention and to boost their ego.

Certain social media platforms are structured for the user to become more selfish; such as Instagram and Facebook. Some people are obsessed about how many likes, reblogs, or shares their posts get. People can “fish” for likes and just try to get as many likes on their posts as possible. This leads people to compete against others to get more likes on your posts. Also, take into consideration followers. Do people know everyone who follows them? The more followers a person has the more likes they will get on a post. Therefore, the more likes they get the more self-attention they get.

Any popular celebrity has a high social capital such as George Clooney. He was able to accumulate the high social capital because of his acting jobs. Being a celebrity can gain fans and follower quickly depending on how popular their fan base is. Accumulating a high social capital will take time especially someone who is not in the media industry. Someone that build their social capital high is Pewdiepie. He is a famous YouTuber who makes video mostly about gaming or other various topics. His channel gained popularity throughout the years and now he is one of the biggest YouTubers. As his fan base grew so did his social capital and other social media networks.