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Our parents always told us not to talk to strangers, but it doesn't count as a stranger if you have over 100 mutual friends, right? As children we were taught that strangers can be dangerous, yet social media's such as Facebook have taken away that fear and convinced us that the more friends you have and the more people you talk to the better your life will be. Social media of all sorts has a control over most people, especially teenagers and young adults, yet it is because of us that it has this power. We have allowed for the amount of likes we get on our photo determine our self worth. By allowing our profiles to be set to 'Public' in order to allow for anyone and everyone who has an account to have access to our lives. It would be strange to go up to someone you have never met before and given them a photo of yourself to keep, or to tell them how mad you are at your boyfriend, yet social media tells us that we can. Social media has the power to change our behaviours by creating an alternate universe in which certain standards are altered. We crave attention of any form, whether it's from our closest friends commenting telling us how pretty we are or that girl you met at the one party giving you a thumbs up, or a complete stranger starting a conversation with you. Our peers judge us on the number of followers we have, or the amount of likes we get, before they even know us. The more followers you have obviously is a clear comparison to how attractive you are, or how exciting your life is. We are shown that it is better to be that pretty girl with the nice clothes who is always out partying, rather than that smart girl who is at home on a Saturday night studying.
I definitely agree with your statement when you say "Social media has the power to change our behaviours by creating an alternate universe in which certain standards are altered". Another point to consider is how easy it is to create a fake identity and construct yourself by your posts to convince people into thinking you are someone else. With Facebook, or rather any social media outlet, you are in control of your own posts, meaning you can easily reach certain standards for any age group, culture, gender, location and appearance.This allows you an easy door way to other Facebook users that also met to these standards. A video that has recently gone viral is a perfect example, http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/coby-persin-dangers-of-social-media-social-experiment/. In this video, a young man conducts a social experiment by cat fishing a young boy on Facebook and messaging to girls to met up with him. The results are shocking, one could suggest that this video argues with what we discussed in this weeks lecture that "others construct your identity on-line" as he has created an identity for himself for others to de-construct.
ReplyDeleteReferences:
Votta, R. (2015). Youtuber lures lures teen girls via facebook in viral 'social experiment'. The Daily Dot. Retrieved from: http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/coby-persin-dangers-of-social-media-social-experiment/
Van Luyn, A. (2015). BA1002: Space: Networks, Narratives and the Making of Place Lecture 3: Space and Identity: Genre and Transformation. (PowerPoint slide) Retrieved from: http://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au
I agree with you in the sense that social media popularity is measured on the amount of “friends” and “followers” one has. This idea could help explain how Taun’s theory of place and space works. If someone is relatively new to a particular social media they would feel it to be more of a space. However, as this persons popularity rises so does their sense of security on this social media, giving it meaning to them and making it a place.
ReplyDeleteConversely, as you say this popularity is a problem, studies show that it could also have its benefits. Social Networking Sites can help these people feel like they are a part of a larger community which allows them to develop stronger relationships with a diverse number of people (Ernst, Rothlauf, Pfeiffer, 2013). This is useful as it provides them as well as the people they befriend more people to be there for them in a time of need, encouragement and also advice.
References
Tuan, Y. (1977). Space and place (p. 3). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ernst, C.-P. H., Rothlauf, F., & Pfeiffer, J. (2013). The Influence of Perceived Belonging on Social Network Site Adoption. Proceedings of the Nineteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, 10.