Self Reinventing On Social Networking Sites

I have many Facebook friends. Some are past and present students from high school and college, friends from camp, church, and some are coworkers past and present. I have also made many new friends and met in real life for lunch or starbucks several times. For me, Facebook works as an easy way to build new networking friendships and invest in the friendships you already have. Are all of our Facebook friends actually our friends? It’s socially clumsy to think that they are. But that is okay. Networking and online friendships have their own rewards. A few of the friends I have met on Facebook have become very good friends. While I may never meet all of them in person, I am very grateful for them. With the busyness of our lives, Facebook helps me to keep up my friendships.

Social networking sites (referred to more broadly as social media) are a collection of websites and applications that enable users to swap ideas, post updates and comments, and participate in activities and events while sharing their interests with other users. From general chit-chat to propagating breaking news, scheduling a date to following election results, gentle humor to serious research, social networking sites are used for a variety of reasons by various user communities. Nowadays, nearly every person who has access to a computer and Internet indulges in some kind of social networking on a daily basis. The introduction of social media has changed the entire dynamics of our lifestyles: the ways we live, work, and maintain our friendships. Despite its numerous advantages, social media does yield some negative effects. However, the benefits of social media greatly outweigh its negative effects.

Facebook has become just another way of provoking emotions without talking to someone. When you read the article, you laugh because of the examples she uses. Like when she talks about how one of her friends said she is “In a relationship with Chinese food.” We have all seen that, we might even be those people. So, you feel happy because you can relate to her at that moment. How many of us have seen someone give a “soliloquy” to people that we don’t even know? We can all relate to the feeling of giving a speech over Facebook because we are behind a screen and we do not think that people are reading it. But she also made you feel guilty when she tells you that we have changed the idea of interpersonal relationships. How many of our “Facebook friends” are really our friends?

For years and years, the internet has progressed so much. So much that communication and our lifestyles have reached a whole new level. One of the many revolutionary inventions is called social networking sites or social media. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and many more, are where people gather on the internet, create a personalized profile about themselves, and interact with other people around the world. Social media can help contact friends, family, and other people long distance. However, our priorities have completely changed to “life isn’t measured by the number of breaths you take, but by how many likes you get on Instagram.” With social media, people seem to lose touch from reality. This whole “me, me , me”

From waking up to an alarm clock in the morning, to texting our friends during the day, to using an electric toothbrush at night, we have all relied on the use of technology. Today, technology has become an essential part of most people’s everyday lives. With the rapid growth of technology, we are continually discovering new ways to make our lives faster and simpler. However, there have been many debates regarding how these new methods have concerning side affects. A lot of concern is shown on our societies dependency upon these new innovations; our inability to cope with life without these useful but not necessary tools.

Most people are uptight about the likes and comments they receive on social media websites, Carr formally proclaims. All of the popular websites use this method to receive more people active on them. Doing this urges people to share personal details about their life. “...people share four times as much information about themselves when they converse through computers as when they talk in person” (Carr 3). It is not necessary for people to share an extreme amount of details about their lives, but they still do.

Epitomized by the Internet and social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp, our society became one of exhibitionism and vanity. In our world it became the norm to expose secrets and share every mundane detail of our existence. It is surprising to us if someone, especially among young people, does not have an account on at least one of the previously mentioned social sites. We sometimes even punish those individuals, most of the time not intentionally, but not noticing them, not being able to connect with them at the same level as with others, making them feel invisible. It is important to note that at the centre of this change is modernity and development, and that personal sharing is the basis of human connection.

Online social networks have become increasingly populated arenas for much of today’s population, especially with regards to high school and college students. Networks such as Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Vine, Twitter, etc., enable users to create an identity and present it to others by allowing them to share various aspects of their lives. Because individuals select their own content, the resulting representation can be either a true or imaginative reflection of the user. The attitudes, perspectives, behaviours and actions each individual chooses to present, shape their identity within the social media universe. Like most other web-based content, the pursuit of authenticity is assumed to be at the heart of these social media networks, playing an important role in our online interactions and our decisions about what web content we believe to be reliable. But, what about when the network structure allows users to create, post, and interact with anonymous identities? Anonymity eliminates the need decipher authenticity, however, it creates an issue by protecting the negative actions of empowered users.

Many people in our society can relate. We wake up, check our phones. We go to school, check our phones. We go home, check our phones. And right before we go to bed, we check our phones. And for what? What are we constantly checking? Imagine logging out of social networking sites for one day. How would you feel? You would probably feel disconnected and want to log back on as soon as possible. This generation uses these websites to connect, to stay in the loop, and to become involved. However, people will take advantage of the use of these websites, and in return, the websites take over the majority of their life. The act of constantly wanting to be

Living in the 21st century requires one to stay current with latest technological advancements. Ever since the development of social networking sites, people are now able to create a carefully-crafted identity for themselves. This has led psychologists to question how well these online personalities match the person in front of the computer. The innovative branch of media psychology looks into how social networking portrays individuals and initiates human interactions within a society.

A social networking website is made popular by a technologically inclined culture which populates the website and has a need to be social online; although not everyone wants to jump on this platform of communication. As the amount of people using a particular social networking website increases, so too will the website's popularity and it’s value in the marketplace resulting in attracting a greater share of the population. Consequently utilizing a domino effect technique. The people who populate the site will become popular at greater levels as they increase their friend base due to the current way Facebook and now Google+ links friends that are a degree or two away. Facebook constantly reminds a user of “People You May Know” even if you don't, but maybe someone in your current circle or association of current friends do. The whole concept of a social networking website is based on popularity so it is no mystery as to why people who use it get the idea to do a “online self-presentation,”(Mehdizadeh 357). A presentation that can be totally honest only including their close friends and family(people who know them best) or one that can be narcissistic in nature where a

* What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks. This can result in connections between individuals that would not otherwise be made, but that is often not the goal, and these meetings are frequently between "latent ties" (Haythornthwaite, 2005) who share some offline connection. On many of the large SNSs, participants are not necessarily "networking" or looking to meet new people; instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network. To emphasize this articulated social network as a critical organizing feature of these sites, we label them "social network sites."

Social network sites (SNSs) such as such as Friendster, CyWorld, and MySpace allow individuals to present themselves, articulate their social networks, and establish or maintain connections with others (Ellison, 2007). These sites could be used for work related situation, romance, connecting with individuals with shared interest, or creating a connection amongst college students. Facebook enables its users to present themselves in an online profile, accumulate ‘‘friends’’ who can post comments on each other’s pages, and view each other’s profiles (Ellison, 2007). Individuals can write on the wall of friends, send private message, comment on posts, as well as chat via instant messaging. Much of the early research on online communities assumed that individuals using these systems would be connecting with others outside their pre-existing social group or location, liberating them to form communities around shared interests, as opposed to shared geography (Ellison, 2007).

Over the past few years something has taken a toll in most people’s lives, we use it, love it, talk about it, and check it almost every hour of every day: this thing is called social networks. It was only a few years back, in 2003, when MySpace was discovered, and in 2004 when Mark Zuckerberg established Facebook, and soon after in 2006 Twitter followed. These sites became more than just an online destination, but a way of life. Notifications, follower counts, friend requests, photo comments- all what might seem like silly things that teenagers and adults alike await the moment they come home to check. We scroll unconsciously through feeds and pictures of people we barely know, from the inquisitive human nature. At school everyone is

Facebook, a social networking website, has changed the way people communicate with each other. A social networking website is an online platform that allows users to create a public profile and interact with other users on the website. Facebook has even changed our most personal and private conversations and how they are conducted around the world. Since the internet’s birth in 1983, this trend of online communication has been growing. Created in 2004, now registered with more than one billion participants, Facebook’s user numbers surpass even the top four social networking websites combined. According to Wikipedia statistics, Instagram has 300 million registered users, LinkedIn has 200 million users, Classmates.com has 50 million users, and Flickr has 32 million registered users. To be further convinced of the claim that Facebook indeed changes the way we communicate, you would only need to create your own Facebook account and start participating in their social networking experience. Technology and internet usage is fused into every aspect of our society including the style of communication. The launch of Facebook in 2006 also enabled other devices such as touch phones, interactive tablets, and even advanced cars with their own networking capabilities starting in 2007. Facebook is a multibillion-dollar company and is highly recognized for connecting more people than other networks. Facebook’s long-term success can be attributed to providing entertainment, world news, and