The Influence of Social Networking
I still find Facebook to be somewhat overwhelming. Having attended two different colleges now, I have around 1,800 friends on Facebook. This seems like way too many, and half of them I don’t even know personally. Freshman year for my sorority, we were required to add a certain number of girls on Facebook who were going through recruitment. This could explain the large amount of my friends that are girls who attend the University of Alabama. I need to go through my friends and “unfriend” some of them, but I just honestly haven’t found the time to actually sit down and do that.
That being said, even with a large amount of Facebook friends, I still seem to see people on my “feed” that I actually interact with daily or almost daily. Facebook has their way of knowing who you interact with most; mostly I would guess from the number of interactions with these certain people. I am influenced by my friends on social media constantly. For one thing, seeing that my friends have gone to certain places and posted about it on Facebook often makes me want to try out these places too, whether it be a restaurant or a cool new place for outdoor activities. I am also influenced by what events I see my friends are attending or not attending.
When I post things, it’s usually an article I can relate to, or pictures from my weekend getaway. The people who usually react to my posts are my close friends and family. My mom is an avid user of Facebook. She is always liking and commenting on my posts or photos.
Usually, I am not opposed to Facebook using my information for research or whatever they deem useful. I am putting it out there for everyone to see. However, the article on how Facebook is intentionally manipulating user’s emotions without their knowledge was a bit concerning. It seems as though this type of unethical experimentation should not be allowed without consent from users.
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Thanks for the interesting post! I’ve read a couple of these posts now, and I think it’s generally agreed that Facebook feeds us more information about our “true friends” than information about our acquaintances. There also seems to be a consensus that “true friends” are much more likely to give us feedback. I’m wondering how much of a role Facebook has in maintaining my friendships. Do “true friends” become acquaintances because they mutually do not care about each other, or do they become acquaintances because Facebook decides not to show each other’s information in their respective news feeds?
I think that we tend to see more posts from the people we tend to “like” more. I know I see more posts from like my best friends, my mom, and my grandma more than anyone else. I think that due to the fact that I like their posts the most. Great post!