20 - Psychology of Social Media

Question 1

1- Social media stats

Answer 1

• Over 4.74 billion people worldwide use some form of social media
• 93% of regular Internet users use social media
  Daily time in Canada: 1h59
• Women aged 16-24 years old use social media the most
• Average = 3 hours 10 mins per day
  Most used platform oct. 22: facebook

Moving Target Problem
* Difficult to study social media since it’s constantly changing
* Social media takes many forms so hard to know if effects can be generalized to all platforms or are restricted to just one

Question 2

Why do we use social media?

Answer 2

Relationship maintenance
* Most common reason people say they use social media is to stay in
touch with family and friends
* Most useful for:
- Weaker-tie relationships
- People high in social anxiety

Emotion regulation and stress management
* Stress triggers more social media use
* Social media as a coping tool
- Seeking social support
- Especially helpful for finding similar others when hard to meet these people in the
real life
* Problem-solving by seeking solutions from network
* Distraction from negative emotions * “Catching” others positive mood
Emotion Contagion on Facebook:
1. Manipulated exposure to emotional
content in News Feed (N = 689, 000)
-Reduced exposure to negative posts
OR
-Reduced exposure to positive posts
2. Examined emotions expressed in status
updates after this exposure
- Positive vs. negative words
Results:
* More positive status updates when exposed to fewer negative posts
* Less positive status updates when exposed to fewer positive posts

Self-presentation and self-esteem boost
* Social media gives people more control to create a particular image of themselves,
especially a socially desirable one
* Can boost self-esteem by feeling more socially accepted
- We internalize the desirable self-presentation we create
- Receive positive feedback from others, probably more than in real life
- E.g. likes, positive comments, followers
- Norm on social media to express positive views of others but not criticisms
- Easier to mask real feelings towards someone online

Question 3

Do our social media profiles accurately reflect who we are?

Answer 3

Do Facebook profiles reflect the “real” you?
* Idealized virtual reality hypothesis: profiles display idealized characteristics that do not reflect who we really are
VS.
* Extended real-life hypothesis: people use social media to communicate their real personalities

Measuring Accuracy of Social Media Profiles* *Real personality:
- According to participant’s self-report, usually Big Five
* Facebook personality:
- According to coders that look at participant’s Facebook page
- Average of coders’ ratings
* Accuracy = extent to coders’ ratings match an individual’s self-ratings
of their personality
- Higher correlation between the two indicates that Facebook personality
accurately reflects real personality

Evidence for Extended Real-Life Hypothesis
* Overall, research shows a positive correlation between people’s self reports of their personalities and coders’ ratings of their personality
- No correlation between idealized self-ratings of personality and coders’ ratings of personality
* Moderation by personality trait
- Some traits are judged more accurately than others
- Extraversion perceived most accurately (r = 0.41)
- Neuroticism perceived least accurately (r = 0.11)

Computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those made by humans
* Algorithm analyzed Facebook likes of 7000 participants and used this to make personality judgments
- Compared to participants’ self-report
* Algorithm’s judgment of individual’s personality based on Facebook profiles was more accurate than friends’ and
family’s judgments of individual’s personality

How is personality be detected from online profiles?
* Offline, accurate personality perception depends on:
- A target expressing cues that are indicative of their personality
- A perceiver detecting and using these cues to infer personality
- Target’s cue expression plays a more important role
* Online personality perception functions the same way
- Personality cues = individual differences in how social media is used

Moderators of Online Personality Accuracy
* Extent of activity on social media
- People that are less active (e.g. post less, change their profile photo less often)
are expressing fewer cues
- Leads to their personality being judged less accurately
* Visibility of trait
- Some traits are easier to detect by perceivers
- E.g. extraversion is more visible than neuroticism
- Visible traits are judged more accurately than less visible traits
- Both offline and online

Personality and Facebook Use
(Moore & Elroy, 2012; Stopfer et al., 2014)
* High extraversion associated with:
- More Facebook friends
- Expressive picture
- More posts
- Posts about current activities
* High openness associated with:
- Posts about left-wing politics
- Creative picture
- Posts about cultural interests
* High neuroticism associated with:
- Fewer positive posts and pictures
- Spend more time on social media, but more likely to use it passively

Personality Correlates with Tweet Words
*see graph

Accuracy of Personality Judgments on Instagram
* Method: 102 Instagram users
- Profiles rated on Big Five by 100 perceivers
* Results: Positive correlation between self-reports and perceiver judgments of extraversion, openness, and neuroticism
- No correlation between agreeableness and conscientiousness

Summary
* Support for extended real-life hypothesis
* Social media profiles appear to reflect our real personalities across
various social media platforms
- Due to targets expressing personality cues via how they use social media
- Some traits are judged more accurately than others

Does Facebook reveal relationship satisfaction?
* People in happy relationships:
- Post more selfies with partner
- More likely to have their partner in the profile picture
* Use more relationship maintenance behaviours
- Positivity (sending cheerful messages)
- Assurances (writing “I love you” on a partner’s wall)
- Used more by long-distance partners

Attachment and Social Media
* Avoidant attachment associated with:
- Preference to use social media to communicate with romantic partner rather
than face-to-face
- Less visible relationships on Facebook
* Anxious attachment associated with:
- More partner-surveillance on Facebook

Question 4

Is social media hurting our well-being?

Answer 4

Facebook use benefits well-being
More Facebook use associated with:
* More feelings of connection with others
* Higher self-esteem
* More social involvement
* More social support

Facebook use hurts well-being
More Facebook use associated with:
* Weaker social interactions
* Lower self-esteem
* Lower emotional well-being
* Lower life satisfaction
* Increased loneliness and depression
* Increased envy

Meta-Analyses
* Evidence across 4 meta-analyses shows no significant link between amount of social media use and:
* Self-esteem
* Depression
* Loneliness
* Academic achievement

HOW Facebook is used seems to matter
Passive use associated with
decreased well-being
* e.g., scrolling through your News Feed,
looking at friends’ profiles
* Leads to more social comparisons and
more feelings of envy
Active use associated with
increased well-being
* e.g., posting status updates, sharing links,
commenting on friends’ photos
* Leads to greater social capital and feelings of connection

Type of Communication Frequency
* People tend to use Facebook more passively than actively

Problem of Generalizability
* Most studies focus on Facebook
* But what about other social media platforms?
- Conclusions about psychology of Facebook use don’t necessarily generalize to
other platforms

Different Social Media for Different Reasons
* Facebook:
- Relationship maintenance and self-presentation
* Instagram (Sheldon & Bryant, 2016):
- Self-documentation, self-promotion, showing creativity, and seeing other’s
content
* TikTok (Omar & Dequan, 2020):
- Self-documentation and creativity
* Twitter (Park, 2013):
- Information sharing and consumption

Instagram and Well-Being
* Depression
- Passive use predicts more symptoms of depression over time
- Symptoms of depression also predict more Instagram use
* No consistent relationship between Instagram use and anxiety or
general life satisfaction
* Body image
- Consuming and posting “fitspiration” content associated with more negative
body image and disordered eating

Facebook on Instagram:
* “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.”
* Internal research concluded that Instagram is engineered towards greater social comparisons than other apps, like TikTok and Snapchat
* Teens told Facebook that they felt “addicted” to Instagram and wanted to check it less often, but didn’t have the self-control to reign in their usage

TikTok and Well-Being
* No relationship between TikTok use and well-being

So… Is social media hurting our well-being?
* Passive use, but not active use, is problematic
* BUT, effects differ depending on social media platform