Social media has carved a very important role in our lives. It has become the yardstick we use to judge ourselves and compare ourselves with others. Facebook, twitter and google+ are all websites that were originally set up and advertised as a means to communicate and stay in touch with friends and acquaintances as well as meet new people. Apart from being a means of communicating, these social networking websites allow users to receive feedback, observe other user’s profiles, upload, comment on pictures, join groups, and list their likes/dislikes. So basically, it is a place where they can present “the aspects of themselves that they are most proud” (Neira & Barber, 2013).
According to the Global Web Index social report, the time spent on social media is 1.72 hours per day. It was also found that the
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One of the factors is who you are friends with and what kind of activity you use Facebook or any social networking site for. For instance, if you use Facebook frequently but are not an addictive user and have a good group of friends outside of the internet that you interact with, the affect of any negative feedback won’t affect you as much. So basically the kind of person you are, the environment you live in, your mental state, your social skills all play a role in what you seek on social networking sites. Negative and positive feedback on social networking sites all affects your self-esteem. The article ‘Friend Networking Sites and Their Relationship to Adolescents’ Well-Being and Social Self-Esteem talks about done on adolescents. The study found that “receiving positive feedback on SNS profiles (78% of participants) was associated with adolescents’ higher social self-concept, while negative feedback (7% of participants) was associated with a lower social self concept, for both male and female adolescents” (Valkenburg, Peter, & Schouten,