Psychological impact of Social Networking Sites: A Psychological Theory (original) (raw)
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Social networking ensures boundless alternative modalities for identity construction, making online users become the more and the more active. Notwithstanding personal traits, people gradually get used to communicate, forgetting about the underlying motivation. People who lack presence of meaning compensate this with active search for meaning. Social networks provide environment of endless opportunities for pursue of personal meaning of life. We hypothesized that time spent on social networking is specifically related to presence of meaning, search for meaning and reality and self-detachment. 190 volunteers aged 12-40 completed Reality and self-detachment scale, Meaning in life questionnaire (MLQ) and Social networking scale. Results reveal that the less is the presence of meaning in life, the higher is the consciously approached new coping strategy of submergence in social networks as a way of losing touch with reality and the self-reported falling under the influence of the contents posted in social media. The trend outlined is the more frequent social networking to predict higher involvement in search for meaning. Long time of daily social networking preconditions reality and self-detachment. In general results replicate the fact that nevertheless several decades ago the web used to be considered having negative effect on well-being, today it and social networks have transformed into a specific behavior norm. The general assumption is about a new form of adaptation-coping behavior revealing the specific accommodation of people, living in reality full of stress and high demands to personal identity and competitiveness and deserves future support. 1. SELF AND VIRTUAL REALITY, REALITY AND SELF-DETACHMENT, MEANING IN LIFE Virtual communication provides illimitable alternative modalities for identity construction, making online users become the more and the more actively involved [1; 2]. What makes the difference between identity alternatives exploration and experimentation is the conscious search and awareness of the different choices. Individuals follow the behavior " norm " to express their personal positions and " choose " their self-representations, whereas this alternative of the real behavior can turn into its makeshift or substitute if remains only virtual, detached from the offline reality. In such cases the word is about compensatory virtual identity. However, in most of the cases the healthy virtual identity is nothing but implicit component of the psychosocial identity that employs the endless resources of the Cyber space for identity attainment, maintenance and reorganization. Virtual identity offers much more mechanisms for self-reflection and adaptation but the online dynamics is much more intensive compared to real world. That is to say that virtual reality can be conceptualized as compensatory on the one hand but on the other hand as promoting psychosocial identity achievement. The benefits and disadvantages demarcation line is both invisible and individual; furthermore it is undetectable as compensation can result in positive changes but identity domains are not separate, but organized in parallel. Another complication is due to the fact that this is not quantitative but quantitative internal feature. Despite personal traits and dispositions, with time people get used to communicate per se, neglecting the underlying incentives and motives and forgetting about them [3]. Early research suggest that the more time online leads to self-isolation, loneliness and worsened artificial personal relations [4] and negative impact on real communication. However, the daily use of Internet today led to rejection of this hypothesis [5]. Nowadays is supported the idea of promotion – communication promotes establishment of relations with new people and improves the quality of relations with friends. Online environment not only ensures opportunity the concealed Self to be revealed, but had become an inseparable part of the real life and a new mode of existence [6]. We support the position that the various forms of online communication have different impact depending on the individual. We further consider that identical online communication in quantitative aspect can be conditioned by different motives. This to a great extent is due to the option non-conventional identities to be explored. Real world is interwoven with the virtual life and the imagination.
Lonely Together: The Psychological Divide Due to Social Networking Sites
International Journal of Indian Psychology, 2015
We live in a world full of judgment and competition, inescapably comparing ourselves and being compared to those around us. The types of actions users take and the kinds of information they are adding to their Facebook walls and profiles are a reflection of their identities. You are your Facebook, basically, and despite all its socialness, Facebook is a deeply personal medium. The time spent earlier during a car ride to a daydream, or building fantasies during lunchtime at work, or those small breaks one took to gaze outside the window are now all time to connect with technology, reply to a text, log on to websites and check email or notifications. I feel robbed on my aloneness, to be rather a buzz of constant communication, that hinders my every moment, and there is always someone to reply to. I finalized this topic because I wanted to explore the need of projection of an online identity of one‟s self and if it is the performance and the constant simulation that keeps us stimulated...
Yana Nikolova, 2022
Taking posting of personal events in pictures and text on Facebook as examples, the article discusses some mechanisms of production of the Self in a new form. Using the process of creating a constructed identity on a social media platform, the paper combines Jacques Lacan, Carl Rogers and Karen Horney in explaining psycho-socially how and why people create an imaginative version of themselves online. The main claim the article makes is that as a result of the communication between the Self and its audience (the Other (s) in the digital), personal values about self-worth change. As a result, self-identification with the consuming audience leads to self-actualizing and glorifying. This sets up the process of creating an Ideal Image based on chosen and hidden content. The work is inspired by several events: the rapid upload of chosen images about personal events on Facebook; the development of narrations through personal profiles; the life in the digital reality and quick popularity that so- called coaches, therapists and etc. start to gain through claiming what to be in the virtual world. The work is dedicated to a special Facebook user who created his reality in pictures that were matching his moods and emotions more rather his physical experiences.
SOCIAL SELF IN A VIRTUAL WORLD
There are individual and collective influences operating on construction of social self. There are also significant dialectic contradictions at work between constructing and experiencing of social self, be it by individual or collective influences. The human species is able to combine different but related processes for social and instrumental interaction by means of individual input to collective activity. It is, however, a bit of a mystery how the balancing process between activity, consciousness and personality materializes in ICT-contexts, by means of social support and in the shape of virtual agency. This study suggests a way of dealing with the features of collective virtual personality.
2012
A self-idea of this sort seems to have three principal elements: the imagination of our appearance to the other person; the imagination of his [sic] judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification (Cooley, C. H. 1922) As it is presented in most of the introductory social psychology books, perception of the self by others and also how we are perceived, play an important role at the construction of identity; especially social identity. Due to this, during the present study which was based on the theory of Cooley, Looking Glass Self (LGS), role of perception of other members of the society at small sized societies was explored. While discussing the theory of LGS, its relation with social media such as Facebook and reason of using such a network was figured out. During the present study it was assumed that “Young adults, in small societies, are willing to use social networks (Facebook) in order to be isolated from the restrictions of the social structure such as embodiment”. For the purpose of the study, online close ended questionnaires was conducted to 100 Turkish Cypriot Facebook users and basic reasons of using such a social network was questioned. Through the questionnaires, relationship between restrictions of living in a small society, significance of how they are perceived by others and being isolated from spatial-temporal factors as well as embodiment was analyzed.
The social interaction on Facebook is characterized by highly idealized phenomenons of transference. The absence of other sensorial channels facilitates the condition for users to give ground to narcissism.
International Journal of Psychological Studies
Taking posting of personal events in pictures and text on Facebook as an example, the article discusses some mechanisms of production of the Self in a new form. Using the process of creating a constructed identity on a social media platform, the paper combines Jacques Lacan, Carl Rogers and Karen Horney in explaining psycho-socially how and why people create an imaginative version of themselves online. This digital version of their Self lives beyond the reality principle. The Self is produced in the digital according to specific needs and drives of its owner. The Other(s) (the audience) that consumes it, bring values and sense of worth by consuming it. The main claim the article makes is that as a result of the communication between the Self and its audience (the Other (s) in the digital), personal values about self-worth change. As a result, self-identification with the consuming audience leads to self-actualizing and glorifying. This sets up the process of creating an Ideal Image...
Addiction to cyberspace: virtual reality gives analysts pause for the modern psyche
International Journal of Jungian Studies, 2018
Analysts have been concerned for decades about the unforeseen psychological impacts of technology. The rapid developments during the past 15 years have brought issues related to cyberspace front and center in analysis and psychotherapy. A specific question arises: what is happening to our capacity for relating openly? We now regularly see “screen time” being used 1) defensively to retreat and escape, 2) compulsively to gratify urges and impulses, and 3) addictively to quench emotional cravings. Problems with limits and recognition of separation confound the positive aspects of cyberspace. Vulnerable egos may not even realize when escapism turns into addiction. Soul can become lost in these activities, when relationships are instead transactional and technology is regarded as numinous. A case example from the author’s practice and another from the media highlight the great risks for soul in this realm of cyberspace.
New communications technologies have influenced billions of people in the recent years, entering into every area of their lives, and social networks have become the focal point of communication with their use. The manner in which communities perceive the world has changed in line with this, and individuals have reached the point of being able to express themselves in different ways, at different locations. These technological leaps have resulted in significant changes in social life, and the changes which have taken place have had a big impact on personal relationships, the manner in which people socialise and even lifestyles. The network community, which is based on virtuality, has found the opportunity to expand and become organised at a level not seen until today, and individuals have obtained the opportunity to 'be together online' simultaneously, ensuring that a new form of organisation and type of action have been born. Social media generates information and news in a very quick manner, while social networks simultaneously forward these to the very wide masses, at the same pace. Users are actively involved in both the generation of this information, and its transmission, while at the same time endeavouring to remain in step with the information traffic which is flowing. Today, almost everyone lives within the mobility of sharing in the social media, tracking hundreds of messages a day, and forwarding many of these to others by sharing them, themselves. However, while they are doing this, they are also becoming detached from their social circles in their real life. Within this context, this study focuses on individuals, who are intensively in communication through the identities they have created in the social networks, but have become detached from their own actual environments – becoming indifferent and antisocial. Focus group discussions have been held with 12 randomly selected persons from among these individuals.
Psychoanalysis, Society and Culture
I am unable to put this article online. Please contact me directly if you'd like to read it: aaron@mindswork.co.uk Within the past decade, engagement with the internet has expanded in ways previously unimagined; internet use is virtually ubiquitous. While a great deal of research has gone into the psychological nature of this use (time spent online, internet addiction, adolescent engagement, etc.), with only a few exceptions little of this research has been taken from a psychoanalytic angle; notably perspectives on the human motivation to relate and the meanings that are made from early and contemporary relations within the context of ‘Web 2.0’. This article suggests that the arguably arcane setting of the consultation room provides a unique space in which particular questions about online engagement can be explored. The contemporary state of affairs with regard to social networking and Google is examined in relation to a clinical example that serves as a reference point from which to open broader questions about a culture’s relationship to the modern internet. A relational psychoanalytic approach will be utilised in order to theorise online relations with reference to the ‘analytic third’ and the developing concept of ‘virtual impingement’.