A Bunch Of Social Issues Related To Facebook And Other Social Networking Sites

(Note: This article was originally posted in the early 2010's and feels a bit dated these days because of its focus on Facebook. At the time Facebook was the social network everyone was obsessed with. These days it still has a good number of users, but it's not as big as it was. However, if you can look past the Facebook-centric stuff, a lot of the broader concepts are still relevant today.)

In this article I'll discuss an assortment of social issues that come up due to using social networking sites. For most people reading that means Facebook, but many of the concepts apply to similar sites and apps as well. For some of the issues I bring up, I just want to mention them more than anything. I don't have any neat answers to solve them.

How do some people have so many Facebook friends?!?

Facebook can display how many contacts you have, and I think it's only human for people to be at least a little self-conscious about their friend count. What can really get someone's insecurities going is when they see a profile where the person has like 847 friends. But even more than setting off feelings of inferiority, it can make you curious. How on Earth can someone actually know that many people? Someone with hundreds and hundreds of "friends" isn't actually in a close relationship with most of them. "Friend" on Facebook really just means "Someone you know and could see yourself wanting to keep up with in the future." Here are some ways people can end up with high friend counts:

Overall I don't think there's a gigantic connection between how many 'friends' someone has on Facebook and how busy or fulfilling their social life is in the real world. There are people with 80 friends who have more satisfying social lives than someone who has 750.

Having to manage the impression you create of yourself online

There's two main ways people have to do this. One is when they're managing their impression for professional purposes, because they're job networking, or their co-workers are Facebook contacts. Here the idea is mainly not to show anything about yourself that's too controversial. It's one thing if someone is consciously choosing to present a certain image to try to further their career. It can be harder when it's forced upon you, like if you've added your boss on Facebook, and now you have to second guess everything you post and be paranoid about whether you've used the proper settings about who can see what.

Secondly, people can feel a general tug to portray and sell themselves a certain way through their profile. Some people go out of their way to post lots of party and bar photos of themselves, to create the impression that they have a busy, rowdy social life. Other people may try to play up the intellectual or socially conscious side of their personalities, maybe by always linking to news stories about national politics. However, they do it, I think it can become problematic if someone feels like they have to keep up with everyone else, and that they're not measuring up if they're not tagged in two dozen new clubbing photos by every Sunday afternoon. A related problem is when someone seemingly loses the ability to be in the moment when they go out. Rather than enjoy their night, they're too busy snapping tons of pictures and thinking about how it'll all look online the next day.

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The fact that you don't exist to certain people if you're not on Facebook

Not everyone is on Facebook. Some people have privacy concerns, or they just don't get a lot out of what it has to offer. However, Facebook can be so central to the social lives of some people that if you don't have an account yourself then you totally drop off their radar. It's the main way they keep in touch with friends and organize plans. Someone who's not on Facebook can really resent this. They feel like they're being socially punished just because they have reservations about joining.

Other miscellaneous opportunities for over-analysis

Even though people have enough real-life social situations to potentially overthink and tie themselves in knots over, Facebook presents brand new ones. Some examples that I haven't already brought up are:

Other ways to worry about how you compare to other people

I already mentioned friend counts. There are other parts of Facebook where people will compare themselves to everyone else. The biggest one is probably regarding how many 'Likes' or comments their status updates get. Someone may take the time to compose a witty or insightful update, not get any 'Likes' or replies, then see someone else getting a ton of attention for a low-effort generic post, and get down on themselves about it.

Whether it's ultimately worth it to stay on Facebook

We all know there are lots of little things about Facebook that can be irritating. I touched on several of them in the points above. Here are a few more:

Some people wonder if it wouldn't just be better to ditch Facebook altogether. Also, I've noticed that if someone is feeling socially out of place and alienated, they can focus on certain things as symbols of everything it is about society they can't relate to. Partying, clubbing, reality TV, and celebrity gossip are common targets. Facebook can be another one. Someone may be feeling that disconnect, and they can look at Facebook and think, "This is what most people are about? Posting what they ate for lunch, and putting up pictures where they're proud of how wasted they got?"

I don't endorse Facebook one way or another. I get it if someone's not into it. I think it has its benefits, and there are ways to manage its drawbacks. Though you can say that about any social media platform. Some of the positives are:

You can mitigate a lot of the annoyances easily enough: