Basic Features

A Well-Presented Subject

A Well-Supported Causal Analysis

An Effective Response to Objections and Alternative Causes or Effects

A Clear, Logical Organization

1

Complain about problems in a tweet over Twitter; add a friend, virtually poke each other, and like friends’ postings and ramblings on Facebook; send images and videos to each other using Snapchat; capture a selfie with Instagram, edit it, add hashtags, and share it for your friends to see and comment on: Social networking is only a click away with apps like Vine and YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Whatsapp on smartphones and tablets everywhere. Over the last decade or so, there has been a remarkable increase in the popularity of social networking. As Figure 1 below shows, the rise in popularity cuts across all age groups. The most dramatic growth has been among young adults. The percentage of 18 to 29-year-olds using social media rose from 9% to 49% in just 18 months, from February 2005 to August 2006. Like young adults, teenagers have flocked to social media. A 2015 survey reported that 71% of all teens use Facebook, along with sites like Instagram and Snapchat (Lenhart). Facebook has tended to outpace other networking outlets for adults as well, with 71% of online adults reporting they use Facebook (“Social Networking Fact Sheet”). Preferences among social networking sites have changed over the years, but the bottom line is that social networking continues to be enormously popular.

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2

The fact that social networking is popular is well established. The question is why is it so popular? The most basic answer is that social networking is popular because it’s available. Without the technological advances that transformed the static read-only Web into the dynamic, interactive virtual community known as Web 2.0, none of the social networking we all engage in today would have been possible. A better answer, though, is that social media offer people a way to satisfy their desire to connect with others and maybe also be “world-famous for fifteen minutes” (as Andy Warhol supposedly remarked). When people were asked what their motivations were for using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, two-thirds of those surveyed reported that they go online primarily to connect with friends and family and meet new people (see fig. 2). As social animals, people have an inherent need for human connection. Professor Matthew Lieberman, in his recent book Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, reports experiments using fMRIs to prove that the need to connect is hard-wired. According to Lieberman, our wiring impels us not only to share, but also to hear. Communication naturally flows both ways: Not only are we “driven by deep motivations to stay connected with friends and family” but we are also “naturally curious about what is going on in the minds of other people” (ix).

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3

Social media outlets offer a way to satisfy both impulses. Consider the story of Emmalene Pruden, a YouTube sensation who began posting her video blogs on YouTube after moving and feeling “cut off from her friends” (Niedzviecki 37). Emmalene is one example of how social media allow individuals to feel connected to a larger community: “If nothing else,” as Niedzviecki claims, “peeping your problem, suspicion, or outrage is guaranteed to make you feel less alone” (142). But Emmalene’s popularity also suggests that — as Hal Niedzviecki, author of The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors, puts it — “it is these quotidian revelations that make her enticing to her viewers” (39). Viewers may feel less lonely knowing that their own everyday struggles and daily trivialities are no different than Emmalene’s.

4

Consider also the story of Lisa Sargese, who “started blogging as a way to tell the truth about her life as a morbidly obese, single woman determined to return to mobility and health via stomach-shrinking surgery” (Niedzviecki 51-52). She chronicled the effects of her surgery, growing her readership as she lost weight. Like Emmalene and her YouTube videos, Lisa was able to produce something that made her audience adore her: the sympathy effect. Readers also found hope by watching her overcome her problems. Niedzviecki makes a powerful statement that applies to both Emmalene and Lisa, as well as to their fans, when he concludes:

We’re alone all the time. We’re alone on the bus, we’re alone walking down the street, we’re alone at the office and in the classroom, alone waiting in line at Disney World. We’re tired of being alone, which is why increasingly we are barely hesitating to do whatever we feel we need to do to push out of solitude. (212-213)

5

This statement rings true throughout the social networking world but especially on Facebook, where users often post whatever is on their minds, however intimate. From the status of their relationships to pornographic home videos, social networkers can find it in a Facebook post. What motivates the extreme sharers?

6

One answer might be a desire for celebrity. Consider the story of a woman who calls herself Padme. For her, social networking has turned into an obsession apparently motivated by her need for fame: “In our case you get to 1.6 million readers it’s really hard to just walk away from that” (qtd. in Niedzviecki 26). Padme appears to be a typical suburban housewife and mother, except that she is also a fantastically popular writer of a sexually explicit Star Wars–themed blog, Journey to the Darkside. Padme’s popularity appears to come not only from her sexual confessions (and visuals), but also from her story of living a double life, as both a mother and as a Star Wars sex slave. In addition to recording her rather ordinary day-to-day activities as a stay-at-home mom, she also writes “about her need to be dominated by the man she calls Master Anakin, the man she’s been . . . ‘married to for 4 years, living with for 12 years, and best friends with for 18 years’” (Niedzviecki 23).

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7

Writing in the American Psychological Association journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture, Dara Greenwood reviews research showing that “a craving for positive feedback and validation may be a common thread that links a desire for fame with social media use” (223). More specifically, she points to the correlation between the desire to be seen and valued and the need to feel connected, “to feel meaningfully embedded in social networks,” as Greenwood puts it (223). While Padme carries her blogging to extremes that Emmalene and Lisa don’t reach, what Greenwood writes applies to all three. The underlying cause of this need for visibility may be narcissism, fairly obvious in all three cases but especially so in Padme’s as demonstrated by the “increased tendency to engage in exhibitionist postings on social media sites” (224).

8

Of course, most of us participate in social networks without getting as carried away as Emmalene, Lisa, or Padme. In fact, if you understood the first paragraph in this essay, then chances are you sign in, sign up, tune in, and engage in many of these forms of social media. So ask yourself: What are your reasons for joining in? To connect? To tune in to what others are up to? To show off? Whatever your reasons, you can be sure you are not alone.

Works Cited

Greenwood, Dara N. “Fame, Facebook, and Twitter: How Attitudes about Fame Predict the Frequency and Nature of Social Media Use.” Psychology of Popular Media Culture, vol. 2, no. 4, 2013, pp. 222-36. PsycINFO, doi:10.1037/ppm0000013.

Lenhart, Amanda. “Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015.” Pew Research Center, 9 Apr. 2015, www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/.

Lieberman, Matthew. Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect. Crown Publishing, 2013.

Niedzviecki, Hal. The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors. City Lights Books, 2009.

Smith, Aaron. “Why Americans Use Social Media.” Pew Research Center, 15 Nov. 2011, www.pewinternet.org/2011/11/15/why-americans-use-social-media/.

“Social Networking Fact Sheet.” Internet Project Library Survey, Pew Research Center, www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/social-networking-fact-sheet/. Accessed 15 Oct. 2015.