Social Capital — Who’s Worth It and Who’s Not?
There is more than one way to measure your “wealth” in society. The most obvious way is economic capital — how much money a person has. Many times we associate wealth with status: celebrities have a high amount of economic capital and they have high status — fame and privileges — in society. Another way we measure someone’s status is based on social capital: the human-to-human relationships you build over time. This can translate into “popularity” which also often times ranks your status — the more friends you have, the more popular you are, thus the higher your status. Celebrities also have high social capital because of their fame. Social capital is a very important part of how society functions because it is how everyone interacts.
However, with the introduction of social media, social capital starts to become a little blurry. Social media allows us to connect online with the people we know in the physical world, but also the connect in the virtual world. This is where things get sticky. How does the virtual world play into social capital? Does having a thousand followers on Instagram really mean you have valuable social capital? According to Pierre Bourdieu,
Social capital is the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition.
So in a sense, yes the virtual friends you make through social media are a part of your social capital. And within social capital there are layers of connections: strong ties — the people you rely on and frequently consult, and weak ties — which are the people you know less and are more a network tool. So the question is, how valuable are these social media connections?
Mark Granovetter argues that “weak ties are indispensable to individuals’ opportunities and their integration into communities” meaning our weak ties are those who spread messages for us. We may not know every single person in our social network to the degrees of depths as some, but they are still valuable. However, social capital is established on trust. So if you have never met some of your followers, how can you trust them? How can you say you even know them?
This is where I argue that not every follower you have on social media is a part of someone’s social capital. For those that strive to obtain thousands of followers on Twitter or Instagram, it just is not worth it. If you have never had person-to-person contact, it is hard to count that follower as a resource. You can’t trust a virtual icon to further your connections in the social world. Unfortunately, there is a warped view that having as many followers as possible on social media merits a higher ranking status. But when it comes down to it, those thousands of faceless names aren’t worth the effort. They are not really a part of your social capital. To me, social capital should be about the people you connect with in the physical world, and can rely on for connections. However, this isn’t to say social media cannot be used as a tool to acquire social capital.
An example of how social media can be used to acquire worthy connections are two of my favorite YouTubers Jack and Finn Harries, also known as JacksGap. The site started with Jack Harries documenting his gap year between school while he figured out what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. What started as a few YouTube videos, ended up as a company and led to Jack and Finn gaining amazing opportunities in the video/photograph/design world. The more popular the videos became, the more people Jack and Finn got to know, creating opportunities such as traveling to India and New York for them. It also eventually led them to their careers: YouTubers and photographers. In this way, social media helped the Harries twins grow their social capital, helping them create connections with real people.
Social capital is a crucial element to living because it is the base of connections. While social media brings an additional layer into building this network, it isn’t necessarily bad. The important thing to remember is who are the people that are worth your time and trust.
Sources:
Patel, Lecture February 7th, 2017.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JacksGap
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/303b/991f6a4d369443a6e6dfb3d93ec462e50864.pdf
