Blog #4 — Motivation
Blog #4 — Motivation 2/16/24
Social Media is fueled by motivation. If you’re not an influencer who gets paid for creating content on social media, there is no underlying motive for people to post. Why do people share their lives on social media, and why are these platforms becoming a staple in everyone’s daily routine?
In the digital age, the world has been consumed by likes, follows, and shares that people have become obsessed with. When you make a post on social media, you can receive instant gratification when someone double-taps their screen. Shirky comments that people have a drive to participate in activities that allow them to feel validated (Shirky 75). Users who post on social media feel wanted by others who interact with them, contributing to their self-worth and sense of belonging. Additionally, these people don’t have to go out into the world and constantly ask for validation. On social media, it’s an expectation. With social motivation, users on the internet will continue to share information to fit in and find a group of people with similar interests that will validate them.
Shirky also makes a point that people are motivated to engage with information that follows their interests as well as informs them. Social media has become the #1 news outlet for people to find any topic that they’re interested in. With television, you have a limited number of channels, but online you have access to millions of different articles and organizations that share news.
Intrinsic Motivation is also used when Shirky refers to the Grobanites for Charity Website (Shirky 80). A group of Josh Groban fans created a website to gather donations to make a gift for Groban’s birthday. The website continued and ended up raising thousands of dollars to donate in Josh Gorban’s name. What was the reason these women came together to do this if they weren’t getting paid? The idea of intrinsic motivation means that people will do things based on their internal thinking. These girls were able to come together and form a group under common interest because they were able to express themselves and contribute to a cause they were passionate about.
Social media also allows amateurs to interact on a worldwide scale. They are divided from professionals by skill but still have the motivation to carry out things because they have a love for it (Shirky 82). In the examples in the book, people have formed groups over their love for things like Harry Potter, anime, or Josh Gorban. This connection is associated with my first point that people like feeling validated, and enjoy being in groups where people can share content on specific topics. This all comes back to Shriky’s idea that people need to fulfill their social needs. With the addition of social media, it has only become easier over time to connect with people with similar interests.
Social media has stuck around because people can form real connections with people all over the world. It’s replacing the awkward communication of finding out someone’s interests and whether or not you want to keep interacting with them. With a couple of short minutes on the internet, you’re able to connect with many different kinds of people in different Facebook groups, Instagram messages, or Reddit forums. Social media speeds up the process of connection and validation, which motivates users to stay on platforms to continue to be stimulated. Social media will forever be influenced by motivation. It’s a basic human instinct to want to be validated and connect with others. Social media just speeds up the process and allows users to express their creativity freely.
