THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIAL MEDIA

This book is about the psychology of social media. It’s about trying to explain how so much of our everyday lives and modern culture came to be saturated with these incredibly popular and absorbing services. We’re going to answer such questions as these:

• How do we express our identities in social media’s rigid profiles?

Why does being ‘real’ on social media feel like hard work? Why do some people find fraping funny, but others don’t? Can we still be ourselves in anonymous environments?

• Can we benefit from connecting with people we barely know?

Which services are best for maintaining meaningful friendships?

 Is there a limit to the number of people we should connect with?

How do we deal with being able to speak to so many people at once? And how can we avoid spreading FOMO among them?

• Why do we say things in our status updates that we might not say in the ‘real world’? Why do we seem to understand privacy issues, yet continue to put lots of personal information in our status updates? Would it be better if our updates faded from view over time? What does it feel like to have all your past social media updates still present, years later?