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Facebook 's Influence On Social Media

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With rapid advancements in technology, social media has become more accessible to people allowing them to spend a great amount of time on social media. Types of social media include Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and Tumblr. However, it wasn’t long before Facebook became one of the most used types of social media compared to others with about 1.15 billion users (Crowell 11). Reasons as to why Facebook has become more popular include that it allows people to do many things such as posting a status, picture, or a video. It allows people to communicate with others all across the world and gives people the ability to make new friends. Facebook also allows you to chat with friends along with playing games. Although it allows for such…show more content…
With Facebook being used frequently, many have taken on research to see what type of people are using Facebook and why it is so popular among users of social network sites. In the article, “Self-Affirmation Underlies Facebook Use,” Toma and Jeffrey believe that the reason for the popularity of Facebook “can be understood through the fulfillment of ego needs” (321). Toma and Jeffrey recognize that other reasons as to why social network cites may be popular could be due to “procrastinating, gossiping, relieving boredom, or expressing narcissistic drives” (321). However, in the article, they propose that what motivates people to use social network sites are “…that [it] allow users to (a) craft self-presentations that reveal core aspects of their self-concept, such as social affiliations and treasured characteristics, and (b) highlight social connections with friends and family, satisfy fundamental ego needs regarding desired self-images” (Toma and Jeffrey 321). In other words, Toma and Jeffrey are saying that one of the reasons that people turn to social media, in this case Facebook, is because Facebook provides a way for people to satisfy their need of self-affirmation by both looking at others profiles and creating their own. They created two studies to test their hypothesis and found that in their first study, Facebook users who spent at least five minutes on their profiles were
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