A Game of Smoke And Mirrors - Stretching the Truth to Fit the Narrative
One is harder than the other, and one is a hell of a lot more fun than facing reality at times.
As we discuss the health effects of a generation of people growing up on social media, there are tons of disconcerting statistics and figures that grab the attention of the masses. Studying human behavior theories from pre social media and using the known logic from those studies breaks down the steps of understanding. If we know why we act a certain way in the first place, it becomes easier to see the picture of what we live in now a little clearer. We just have to want to see it.
Social comparison are a tricky, wavering game that individuals across the planet deal with. Derived sense of self through comparing ourselves with others is how psychologist Leon Festinger defined his Social Comparison Theory back in 1954. Festinger argue that people “have a tendency to make downward social comparisons with those who are worse off or less skilled than them, and this can raise their self-esteem”. The same applies for upward social comparisons, which has been seen to reduce self-esteem. It could be argued that if society was making ground on recognizing and consciously in check with the groundwork of social comparisons in the 1950’s, then I would feel confident in saying that the introduction of social media threw that process out the window.
Taking note of where you are in your life with your goals and aspirations is not a negative trait. This check on one’s self is a good method of making adjustments, realization of areas of improvement, and implementing a plan on how one might reach the goal in sight. When these comparisons take place in the real world, this usually involves a few others - peers, family, coworkers, etc. In the digital landscape, social media presents a limitless number of social comparisons that are presented as many times as the user chooses to check their device. Research from Robin Dunbar, a specialist in primate behavior and evolutionary psychology, suggest that research predating social media estimated that the average person had 10-20 close relationships, with a second tier of around 150 wider social relationships. While the number of friends that people still hold in relationships personally in the real world still hovers around the 10-20 mark, the average amount of “friends” on social networking is estimated in at 338. Alongside that figure of the average 18-34 year old running an average of 8.5 social media accounts. Generations moving forward have a much wider playing field concerning social networking. Remembering that just not too long ago the only connection we made was with people in the real world one-on-one, this dramatic increase in social interaction as an entire population creates the wormhole and temptation of increased social comparisons.
45 years before Facebook was released, studies of self-presentation were being explored by psychologists. The 1959 novel, ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’, by Erving Goffman, suggests that people have discretion as to how they present themselves, in a variety of ‘performances’. Meaning depending on the environment in which a person finds themself in, then that “character” is revealed. This can be followed up by the fact that digital conversation has advantages over face-to-face communication in that a person or user can enhance their self-presentation.
Growing up in the South, I have been preached to my entire life that the way I present myself holds more weight than I could imagine. This self presentation holds more than respect to yourself, but to your namesake, your family, who you associate with, and the people who are accredited for raising you. Everyone wants to be perceived as their ideal self, but that takes work that some do not have the knowledge or time to begin searching for. That takes being honest with yourself when it is easy not to be, and taking the initiative to make constructive changes to be true to yourself. Social networking has made that gap of honesty in self presentation stretched. The platforms that we use, like Facebook and Instagram, have a somewhat innocent self centered approach - these pages and profiles the user creates are all about them. These platforms naively or cleverly have shed marketing and advertising techniques on individual users who now are marketing themselves as a “product” more than a person more or less. Just like a business, followers and friends see what is normally the best of the best, or the ideal self. Those users who experience social comparisons sometimes struggle to find anything but the upward comparisons to measure their “performance” in life by.
The ground between your ideal self, or how a person would like to be perceived, and the other self’s is the juggling act that we often see taking place. E. Tory Higgins in 1987 said that the way we feel about ourselves depends on the gap between different self-representations. This was coined the Self-Discrepancy theory. In which we defined the actual (how we really are), ideal, and ought self (how we think we should be in the society we live in). We know that social media givers the user more opportunity to compare themselves, and social media contributes to a fabricated look at other’s ideal and ought self. As touched on earlier, some folks perceive themselves to be more well off, or sometimes more desperate than their reality truly is.
With extensive research in human behavior leading up to the creation of social media, I believe it is important to look back at the groundwork that has been laid out before us. This will give us the opportunity as a society as we traverse through the mental health of social media users, so we are not starting behind the eight ball. Working on self control and this knowledge of how are brains work will be the main ingredients for a remedy as we move forward.