Most people are on social media regularly, but don’t necessarily think about how it impacts themselves, their daily lives, and their relationships.
Social media contributes to the growth of friendships in various aspects. In one way, it’s keeping in touch with long-distance friends and relatives. In another, it is lessening the loneliness of not feeling accepted in community by online friendships and connections.
Rachel Richter, a sophomore early education major at UofM, discussed how social media has helped developed her friendships.
“As a daughter of a Navy dad, social media has been essential to maintaining friendships when we had to move, which was quite frequently,” said Richter. “I found it so hard saying goodbye to friends, especially since I always knew it would end up happening, but social media helped ease those anxieties and lessen the loneliness I often felt.
On the flip side, social media does have some negative attributes including how a person might view other people.
“It has helped me get close to a couple of people; however, it has also made me end some friendships much quicker as compared to if I wasn’t on social media as much,” said Ivy Wang, a senior business management major.
“I think (social media) can cause an expectation of instant communication and make us lose sight of how busy life is,” said Richter. “We end up thinking we are owed an instant response and get bitter when we’re left on delivered. I also think it’s spurred on a lot of jealousy and FOMO.”
FOMO (fear of missing out) contributes to the negative attributes of social media as well as feelings of loneliness. FOMO has been a leading issue with social media users and friendships. According to socialmediavictims.org, “FOMO stems from a desire to avoid loneliness by forming interpersonal attachments. This desire is grounded in the need to belong.”
“Since social media has so many capabilities of being able to tag everyone and add as many photos as you want to post, it can be hard to keep your insecurities from speaking up when you aren’t included in a post,” said Richter. “It makes you wonder why you were the ‘only one’ not mentioned, even if that’s not the case, and if your presence wasn’t appreciated as much as you appreciated being there with them.”
Instead of feeling more connected with a bunch of followers, people are feeling even more lonely.
“This cycle makes the fear of missing out a self-fulfilling prophecy. The process of constantly checking social media causes users with FOMO to miss out on the activities in real life that would contribute to a heightened sense of satisfaction and belonging,” socialmediavictims.org stated.
Experts have determined the correlation between the rise in depression among younger people with high social media usage. Loneliness can worsen by social media usage, even after already suffering from loneliness in life beforehand, through virtual “contact” through friends and followers via social media platforms.
“I often feel that creating friendships is more difficult because so many people are sucked into various forms of social media that it dilutes the ability to have an intellectually stimulating conversation,” said Nikki Varnadore, a mother of six children and manager at Patriot Bank in Covington.
This leads into a whole other issue – are our followers or friends on social media actually our friends?
According to Bryant University, social media is more of a means of networking. “Through social media, friendships have become a means of business networking, status boosting, and quantification. For instance, person A needs person B’s follow request to look better. When person A and B have followed one another, they have helped boost one another’s status,” Bryant University researchers said.
17 people responded to a survey about social media and friendships. When asked, “How has social media impacted your friendships positively?” most said that social media has helped them maintain closeness, stay up to date, or helped stay connected while being far apart from friends. When asked how else social media has impacted friendships, 4 of the 17 respondents said they met new friends via social media.
Social media can have either positive or negative attributes. Depending on how you use social media depends on the outcome of how social media can impact your friendships or bring people together online.
