By Stephen Cook
Prior to the invention of social media, nobody had to worry about being “unfriended.” Now, what started out as a way for college students to stay connected has turned into a widespread phenomenon with some very real implications.
According to recent studies, Facebook is having a direct effect on how people view, treat and interact with others in real life. A study by Professor Catalina Toma, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Professor Jeffrey Hancock, from Cornell University, concluded that the popularity of Facebook can be better understood by looking at how it fulfills the needs of peoples’ egos and gives them self-affirmation.
Ryan Darrow, adjunct assistant professor of Psychology, said he sees people viewing themselves as quasi-celebrities, looking for attention from their peers.
“They can tweet funny quips, they can post funny updates or YouTube, upload some crazy video and they do it all to this fictional audience,” Darrow said. “It’s a stretch for them to sit down, to have an emotionally connected conversation or to deal with disappointments and to deal with rejection.”
Diane Kappen, adjunct professor, Psychology, also said an inflated, built-up self-esteem is one of the root problems.
“The basis of a lot of this stuff too, you have high self-esteem, but it’s rather baseless,” Kappen said. “We’re trying to make our kids and our students feel good about themselves, but they have to be based on something that they had done.”
Another study by Christopher Sibona, a doctoral student at the University of Colorado Denver Business School, found that 40 percent of people surveyed said they would avoid a person in real life who unfriended them on Facebook.
According to Darrow, the millennial generation already has a difficult time expressing and dealing with their emotions. If they are unfriended by somebody, then the problem is only exacerbated.
“The idea that they’ve been rejected, couple that with the lack of emotional intelligence their inability to identify, assess and control their emotions, to have emotionally intelligent conversations, they can’t face those issues at all,” Darrow said. “So they just ignore it, they go onto the next friend, the next person, drown themselves in a passive aggressive post, never address the issue, they don’t sit down one and one.”
Emily Gliserman, student, said on Facebook, people are more likely to say something to you that they wouldn’t normally say in person.
“It takes more courage to say something to someone’s face,” Gliserman said. “[On Facebook] you don’t have to face the consequences of their reaction immediately, if you don’t want to. You can act like it didn’t happen, and you don’t have an actual exchange with somebody.”
Logan Blackburn, student, believes online interaction through Facebook is starting to parallel real life when it comes to relationships.
“When someone isn’t your friend on Facebook, people kind of take it seriously in real life too,” Blackburn said.
When you’re online, it’s human nature to try and make yourself look as good as possible, Gliserman explained. With Facebook you can do that, but it may or may not be who we really are.
According to Kappen, we are naturally built to be social people. Our brains react a certain way to face to face communication. However, today people are changing how their brains react by changing how they communicate. In 1988, when Kappen first came to the college, she said students would wait in the enrollment line and be forced to talk to and get to know other students. Nowadays, students have become accustomed to electronic interaction rather than face to face.
“My students come in and instead of talking to each other[…] they use their cellphones and their texting,” Kappen said. “They don’t get to know the people around them. […]The weird thing about it, is not like people do that on purpose, ‘I’m just not going to talk to anybody because I don’t want to,’ you have kind of trained your brain that way.”
This isolation has had an impact on how people respond to conflicts and personal issues. Darrow said before, people would sit down and have a face to face conversation if there was a disagreement or if somebody had hurt feelings. Now, instead of resolving matters, Darrow said young people are reacting with a ‘click’.
“I think there’s a lack of emotional intelligence in that millennial generation,” Darrow said. “I think there is a definite lack of ability to identify, assess and control their own emotions […] because it just goes back to, if you don’t like what’s being said, you just unfriend somebody, or you hang up the phone or you just don’t retweet what they said.”
Ultimately, Darrow believes it is important to not let other people influence your outlook and attitude, especially when it comes to social media.
“I think one of the most powerful things my mom ever said to me growing up was, ‘Not everybody’s going to like you,’” Darrow said. “It’s even funny, because Facebook doesn’t even have an unlike button, it just has a like. There’s something to be said psychologically about that.”
Contact Stephen Cook, copy editor, at scook35@jccc.edu.