The Attraction of Social Media

       Social media started out as a way to keep people updated on your daily life, your hobbies and most  photographs, but over time it’s morphed into streams of people bragging, comparing themselves, and putting themselves in unhealthy situations. Ever since apps were invented with wireless phones and data, people have invested themselves into trying to stay with the fads of having all the best games and apps. It’s become a global epidemic of people losing track of what really matters or who they truly are just so that they can have the best social media status. It seems like social media has more negative impacts than positive, so you might be thinking, why do people like it and continue using it?
       Social media meets many human needs that we all share. Everyone wants to fit in with their peers and not stand out as weird, so they join the bandwagon and download the hottest apps and follow the most popular users so they can acquire that need for affiliation. Social media also has the ability to meet your need for guidance because you can follow the people you admire and you can see how they live their lives. Also, commonly used social media apps like twitter, instagram, snapchat, youtube, facebook, etc. all share the same feature of having followers. This means that if you create a user, the  people you know can follow you which gives you the sense that people are there to hear and see what you have to say and it provides comfort. Our need for autonomy is met with social media because carefully choosing and planning your posts can bring you attention and help you stand out as unique and quirky. One of the biggest reasons people use social media it to meet the need for attention. Social media gives you the oppurtunity to say or show yourself in any way you want without direct judgement. This allows people to rant about their lives, overshare, post revealing images, and so on without feeling guilty because they aren’t seeing themselves like how others are seeing the posts. If people desire attention, they aim to get as many followers as possible and they get so caught up in this false world of thinking that followers are the most important thing when in reality they might start losing friends because of the things they had to risk to get their followers. The need to escape is met with social media because people can live their whole lives on it and they have the power to show themselves to the world the way they choose and they can project their lives to be different than how it might really be. They use it as a way to escape from reality to a place where life is easier. Lastly, the need for aesthetic sensations is one of the reasons people revert to social media. People want to see pleasing images and creative ideas, and on apps such as instagram, entire accounts are dedicated to satisfying videos or beautiful artwork. These needs are mostly natural and people all over the world want to meet them and social media is the only way they know how. Social media keeps thriving and is on the rise because everyone uses it to bring themselves pleasure although the good things all have downsides that come with them.
      Along with meeting desires and needs, social media is attractive to today’s society because the popularity and judgement it gives. This might seem like a reason to stay away from social media, but to some people, it just makes their desire stronger because they feel like they have to meet societies expectations to be deemed “cool”. “If you don’t get at least 100 likes on your instagram post, you’re not popular. If you don’t have at least 10 snapchat streaks, you don’t have friends; if you’re youtube video doesn’t get at least 1,000 views, you’re not worth it. If you don’t get retweets and likes on all your tweets and if you’re not following all the major celebrities and politicians, you’re not woke.” These are words that surround the social media world and they create standards that people want to meet so they stick with the app until they feel they met their expectation. Social media is  like a trap where you’re put into a fake world and you’re trying to impress other people with virtual abilities when obtaining these usually means you also have to take risks that can interfere with your real life.       Social media has techniques that make people never want to leave it. With snapchat streaks and daily videos and posts, people go back to the app hourly, if not more, to make sure they aren’t missing out on anything. It’s become an addiction in society to the point where people have trouble even being in different rooms from their electronics for long periods of time. Bright screens have also become an addiction and a health problem because people stare at them for so many hours every day that when they read a book or go outside, their eyes hurt and they want to go back to the “comforting”, fluorescent glow of their phone or laptop.      Social media can continue being broken down into the various techniques it uses, but there are so many. What’s mentioned above covers just a small portion of the reasons people use social media  and most of them were indirect. There’s also a lot of direct techniques of social media that involve colors, the rapid amount of information that can be accessed so easily, and the openness to see things about the other side of the world. Social media is cleverly planned and it definitely has unhealthy effects, but people are happy using it so it will continue to grow in society.