Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on How Social Media Benefits Us?
Therefore, we are looking at social psychology.
This episode is sponsored by my free eBook What is Psychology?
How Can Social Media Benefit Us?
Within psychology and wider society, social media is constantly and rightfully complained a lot because social media has a lot of downsides. From cyberbullying to mental health to body
image.
There are a lot of problems with social media.
However, in this social psychology episode, I wanted to take a positive spin and show the positive sides of social media.
Large Scale, Immediate Validation:
As humans, we love to be validated.
We love people to say well done or great job to us.
It’s who we are.
And social media provides us with this instant, because you can post a photo or post about your achievement and other people get to see it. Giving you tens or hundreds of comments and likes.
Therefore, you instantly feel good about yourself and after you’ve achieved something you need to validation to stay motivated.
For example, when I released episode 61 of the podcast with J. F Penn, I posted it on my private Facebook profile- so I could get validated for landing an interview with a great guest.
Appreciation:
Another typical feature of the human experience is appreciation because we all love to feel appreciated and we like to give appreciation.
I know as an author. I have done with plenty of times.
Because of if there’s a particular company or author, I want to give a outshout to in another country. I can easily tweet my appreciation.
I have done plenty of networking this way.
For example, J. F Penn lives half the country away from me, so I could never show my appreciation to her without social media.
Plus, it’s not only great to give out appreciation. It’s great to be thanked for showing appreciation.
Again, my use of Twitter is proof of that.
In short, social media is a great tool to feel appreciation from others and receiving it yourself.
This greatly benefits well-being.
Crowdsourcing:
Personally, this is my favourite use of social media because I’m a part of two major author Facebook groups, and they are amazing!
For the sole reason of picking other authors’ brains about writing, publishing and marketing and other things.
This allows me to crowdsource ideas and help other authors without ever meeting or talking to them. without social media, I and a lot of other authors would have been stuck!
The same goes for psychology Facebook groups!
Conclusion:
Yes, social media has a lot of problems, but there are benefits.
It’s jobs as psychologists and/ or people interested in psychology to help people use social media for the positives.
I really hope you’re enjoyed today’s episode.
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References:
Bingham, P. M., & Souza, J. (2009). Death from a distance and the birth of a humane universe. Lexington, KY: BookSurge Publishing.
Geher, G. (2020). An evolutionary perspective on the real problem with increased screen time. This View of Life.
Geher, G. & Wedberg, N. (2020). Positive Evolutionary Psychology: Darwin’s Guide to Living a Richer Life. New York: Oxford University Press.