3 Community and Social Media Use

Social Media Community Formation and Dissolution

This chapter takes a look at the ways social media technologies create community, the ways user communities utilize these community spaces, as well as the way it changes, fosters and challenges our social relationships.

Virtual Community

In 1983, Benedict Anderson published the book Imagined Communities. The book was written before the rise of social media, and was largely focused on the role of media (especially print media) in shaping our sense of community. Anderson argued that we all engage with the same national media, and we do in places far away from each other (often across the country from each other) and at different times of the day. We also might never know the other people who engaged with the same media we did. But, Anderson showed that we imagined that others were doing the same thing, even when we did not have conversations with other people to confirm this was true, and we imagined ourselves as part of a larger community who felt similarly about the things we encountered in the media. He wrote, “members…will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion (Anderson, 1983, p. 6).

So, for example, in the 1990s (insert “back when I was a kid” here), I watched Friends as it originally aired on TV. I didn’t really talk about the show with other people, but I imagined that there was an entire community of other people who were also watching the show and liking the same parts I did.

The rise of social media also meant the rise of online chat boards and eventually algorithms who brought those imagined communities to life. I no longer need to imagine that I have a community of like-minded fellow citizens who watched the same show I did and who now think the same way I do. Now, algorithms and other social media tools allow me to see, in real time, other people whose media experiences and interests match my own. So, social media moved us from an era of imagined communities to an era of virtual communities.

Community and Connection (or not)

First, let’s review how technology adoption works, and this is a mixture of technological determinism (where the technology forever changes some parts of our lives) and technocultural approaches (where we adapt technologies to fit our social worlds). According to a 2022 paper, users “domesticate” their technologies and the algorithms found within them to better fit their needs. This happens in four main steps:

1. APPROPRIATION: We encounter a new piece of technology (a cell phone, a social media app, the algorithm that makes that app function), and we bring it into the private sphere. That means that we take what is essentially a public good (anyone can access the app and the content provided on it is largely public) and we bring it into the private sphere (we engage with this in our personal time, in the privacy of our own spaces).
2. OBJECTIFICATION: In using these technologies and algorithms, we give them meaning and value in our lives. Different platforms take on different functions in our lives. What we post on Facebook to keep up with parents and aunts/uncles is likely vastly different than what we post on SnapChat, or TikTok, or whatever other platforms you use. We give these spaces meaning in our lives and use them to help us fill the purposes that we’ve assigned to each.
3. INCORPORATION: We integrate technologies into our everyday lives. For example, many of you commented in your social media withdrawal assignments that you check your phones first thing in the morning, suggesting that your phone and the social media apps it contains are integral parts of your days. Others said they completed the 24 hours, except for SnapChat, because they have given meaning to their Snapstreaks and integrated this feature into their daily routines.
4. CONVERSION: Having appropriated the tech, given it meaning, and incorporating into our world, we have now integrated the technology into our private life. The technology then becomes an omnipresent portal to the outside world. This was definitely true during COVID time, when we literally could not meet up and we relied on social media for much of our social interaction. But it is also true just in general. For many of us, social media provides a social outlet and an information channel. We rely on it to connect us to what is going on in the world around us.

Integrating social media into our personal lives can be good and bad. So let’s explore some research on this.

Disconnecting

In 2011, Sherry Turkle published a book called Alone Together that began with a story about a trip to Europe she took with her teenage children. While seeing some of the most notorious tourist spots, she noticed that instead of taking in the moment, her children were wildly searching for a cell phone signal so they could text friends and post photos to social media.

The refers to the ways we have integrated technology into our lives as places of social collection. Places of social collection are the spaces we gather to be in the same rooms as our friends and families, so we are physically together, but then we use our phones and social media apps to give our attention to people who are not present. As she argues, we use our phones to constantly take us out of the place we are (at dinner with friends, at a baseball game, watching a movie with our loved ones) and to another space (the space of connection with those who are present via social media).

In other words: we are constantly pausing our interactions with people in the physical world to tend to interactions we have with people who are somewhere else. I’m sure we’ve all done this and experienced it. We say, “just one second” as we send a text or respond to an email, and then “time in” again to our face-to-face conversation.

Check out this Ted Talk where Turkle explains her argument in more detail:

Turkle argues this reduces our ability to connect with others because we aren’t fully present enough to really get to the depth of conversation that true connection requires. Instead, we have little conversation “sips” that leave us feeling quite lonely.

More recent researchers call this extended loneliness. This is the idea that we are connected to hundreds (maybe even thousands) of “friends” online, so we are not lacking opportunities to chat with other people. Instead, extended loneliness is the complex emotion we feel when we are connected to many people online in superficial ways but still leaves us longing for meaningful relationships. The more of these surface-level interactions we have, and the fewer in-depth connective conversations we have, the more likely we are to feel extended loneliness.

Scholars and medical professionals worry about the rise in chronic loneliness among young adults. Loneliness is linked to a number of health risks, including reducing immunity, increasing anxiety and depression, increasing risk of substance abuse, and increasing the likelihood that people will turn to maladaptive coping mechanisms like harmful online chat communities (Brennan, 2021, p. 229). Edward Brennan (2021) looks historically at the ways our society has questioned whether loneliness was caused by various media. For example, the rise of mass-mediated television coincided with a fear among white middle-class suburbanites that they were not experiencing the same connection and lifestyle as their peers. In essense, they compared themselves to highly stylized depictions of white middle-class suburbs on television and felt lonely and unsuccessful by comparison. Brennan reminds us that this is about media encouraging a lonely feeling, but it is also about the precarity of an economic situation and about the ways that what we have becomes tied to our opportunities for upward mobility.

Brennan goes on the say that social media exacerbates this problem for two main reasons:

1. Social media is also highly stylized, offering us carefully curated looks into the lives of our friends online. We follow highly successful and conventionally attractive influencers, whose lifestyles are unattainable. Even among our peers, we post only our best images and stories of success. We seldom discuss our failures on social media, creating an unrealistic image of success for others to emulate.
2. Social media gives us the added technological affordance of lateral surveillance. Lateral surveillance ensures that our peers watch and judge the things we are doing against the standards of excellence they see. Brennan gives the example of learning to play music. It takes time and years of practice to really be good. When we compare ourselves to the professional standards we see online, we often quit before we’ve had a chance to get started. When we add to this lateral surveillance and the harassment of comment sections, we see people opt not to try something new that brings them joy out of fear they won’t be good enough.

Both of these factors increase the likelihood of self-isolation. We isolate ourselves away from peers because we do not feel like we live up to the unreal (as in, not actually even real) images we see via social media. And we isolate ourselves away from things that bring us joy because we aren’t as good as the very polished folks we see on social media and we fear comparison to them (from ourselves and from our peers).

Lastly, social media overuse can also make it more difficult to connect to others, both online and IRL. For most students, the social media withdrawal assignment is a wakeup call regarding their social media usage. Students express feeling agitated, a fear they are missing out on something happening on social media, a compulsion to grab their phone and check social media, pulling up social media apps out of habit without even realizing they are doing so, reflections on long hours spent engaging with social media without even realize that much time passed, as so on. These are all characteristics of social media addiction, which is defined as the compulsive use of social media to the point that it impacts functioning in other areas of your life.

(This test is one of many that exist to help you assess whether your time spent engaging in social media has become problematic.

Research on social media addiction shows that heavy and compulsive use of social media is associated with:

• Reduced ability to perform work functions
• Negative impacts on social relationships
• Worsening sleep issues
• Lower sense of life satisfaction
• Increasing feelings of jealousy
• Increasing anxiety and depression

Among teens and young adults, research shows that social media use has quite different impacts than similar use among adults. Whereas adults who have high levels of social media use and information sharing experience decreases in life satisfaction, teens and young adults report increasing life satisfaction when they regularly post online. Still, research highlights several emerging areas of concern for social media use online:

• High levels of use: Though it is difficult to determine the rate of social media addiction, we do know that high levels of social media use (2+ hours/day) among teens is associated with decreased academic performance, decreases in time spent on other activities, and an increased likelihood that the individual will internalize problems instead of asking for help.
• FOMO: High levels of Fear Of Missing Out (clinically defined as “a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent”) is associated with a decrease in mood and general sense of wellbeing, a decrease in life satisfaction, a decrease in self-esteem, and an increase in maladaptive social media usage.
• Nomophobia: Nomophobia (aka no mobile phone phobia) is the feelings of anxiety when, for whatever reason, you are without your cell phone. This also includes “ringxiety,” which is characterized by constantly checking your phone for any updates or messages and the feeling that you need to be constantly available to others. Nomophobia is associated with social media addiction, as well as similar individual health outcomes associated with increased social isolation, mental health issues, anxiety, depression, and stress.

Connecting

The picture painted above about social media use and misuse can feel pretty glum, especially because many of us likely see these impacts in ourselves or in the lives of those close to us. But, there are also a number of studies that suggest social media can improve our lives and sense of social connection in many ways. Let’s take a look at a few of those findings.

First, let’s look at studies that assess some of the same issues Turkle discussed above. Research shows us that:

• Regularly users of social media are less likely to know their neighbors, BUT, they are more likely to have more diverse social networks they can rely on for the functions we once relied on neighbors to achieve. So, if you get a flat tire, you might not know someone in the next building who can fix it for you. But, you are more likely to have a larger and more diverse social network of people you can rely upon for help.
• Turkle is right that cell phone users are less likely to pay attention to what is happening in their immediate surroundings. But, one study showed that when researchers observed people in public spaces (like at a park, for example), they found that only about 10% of people were actually actively using their phone, and those users were less likely to be along in public. Many of them were using their phones to facilitate meeting up with other people or were sharing content they saw on social media as a way to connect.

Social media is also now among the major hubs for community connection. In 1989, Oldenburg published a book talking about the idea of “third space,” which consist of the spaces we turn to for vital aspects of our informal social life, but that are not the primary spaces we spend our time like home or school/work. Instead, third places might be spaces like coffee shops, churches, common areas of the dorms, the cafeteria, or any other spaces we typically gather that have become major hubs for our ability to building community.

Recent research highlights the ways that community groups on social media have become vital third spaces. For example, neighborhood groups on social media sites have quickly replaced attending council meetings or other community groups as a primary way that people living in the same area can connect. For example, the Facebook pages for the community I call home is alive and well, and people regularly use it to share information about upcoming events, crowdsource answers to issues that arise, and so on. These online community spaces are often more inclusive, as people can communicate without needing to gather at a set time and in public. This means that they are often more accessible, especially to people who have difficulty navigating to/from public spaces, who lack access to affordable childcare, etc.

Research suggests social media is also a thriving third space for young people. One study looked at teens who use TikTok as a third space to discuss politics and social justice issues, and they found that these spaces lead young people to be more politically informed and more likely to engage in politically significant actions such as voting. Another found that publicly sharing information about the activities we do to support causes we care about is associated with higher levels of political engagement both online and offline. This is likely due to the importance of impression management, or the idea that to be seen as credible among our peers, the actions we profess to engage in online must match the actions we are seen engaging in during our regular face-to-face lives.

Another factor that increases the sense of community building online is the strategic use of algorithms to increase connections in certain areas of our lives. Siloscociality is a term coined by Abidin in 2021, and it states that algorithms provide users with intense sub-groupings who create their own norms and forms of community expression. These “silos” in social media allow us to connect more deeply with other users whose experiences and needs are similar to our own.

One study on silosociality looked at people who followed #grief accounts on TikTok. This study found that many users were negatively impacted by our culture’s inability to discuss grief in health ways (for example, suggesting someone move through their grief quickly or stop talking about it altogether after a brief amount of time). This pressure led users to #grief accounts on TikTok. Because people who see these accounts are likely to be filtered out by algorithms pairing them with this issue, the users they encountered were also experiencing intense grief, creating an “algorithmic closeness” among members of this subgroup. They defined their own cultural norms that were different from the pressures they faced IRL, which included talking openly about grief and discussions of grief that lasted for years and years after the initial event. These intense subgroups were associated with positive outcomes for users (Krutrok, 2021).

The same is true for other subgroups on social media. For example, BookTok accounts create community around reading, and studies show that people who follow BookTok accounts experience:

• Increased reading for pleasure, which is associated with a number of positive health outcomes
• Increased emotional connections to books, characters, and virtual communities of readers, fostering positive community

The language choices used in BookTok accounts, including discussions of character tropes or genres, have also helped libraries market services to young readers, and it is also associated with helping teachers promote literacy in schools (Merga, 2021; Jerasa and Boffone, 2021).

Additionally, there is an increasing body of research that shows that social media usage among older adults can increase access to health resources and decrease loneliness.

Social Media Refusal

So, should you just quit social media?

It is basically impossible to reclaim a full version of privacy online, unless you live off the grid, pay cash for everything, have no assets or friends, etc. And even then, someone could always be watching you. So, for all practical purposes, it is impossible to live in the world without some form of a digital footprint.

However, some people do engage in selective social media refusal, meaning they quit some social media sites. The most popular site to quit in a fury is Facebook. Almost half of facebook users surveyed said they had seriously considered leaving the platform at some point, but only 1 in 10 people actually stay off for good.

When people quit Facebook (delete their account), Facebook removes all identifying metadata so people can no longer publicly see your profile or any of the spaces you’ve posted in the past. But, Facebook does not remove the content itself, so it is stored on a server somewhere in case you ever decide to reactive your account (and chances are, you will).

May people who make a big public display about how they are quitting Facebook or Snapchat or whatever platform “FOR GOOD” are displaying what scholars call consumer citizenship. That means the person uses their non-user status (their status as the person who deleted their Facebook account) as a form of self-identity. Some people quit because it is uncool, so their status as a non-user would suggest they are “above” that. Some people quit because they dislike the privacy policies Facebook uses, so they quit to show their political identity around issues of privacy. For some people, quitting becomes a site of everyday resistance that signals to others their value systems.

In 1994, a sociologist named Thorstein Veblen created a concept called conspicuous consumption. This is the idea that people display their status through goods. For example, if you want to be seen as part of the cottagecore trend, you’ll probably spend money at thrift stores instead of high-end fashion stores. If you want people to think you’re rich, you might buy a nice car. The point is, you display your status through goods.

Social media scholar Laura Portwood-Stacer adapted this term for people who quit social media, referring to the big dramatic public posts some people make when they quit social media as “conspicuous NON-consumption.” Her research shows that people who make a big display of quitting are using their status as a non-user as a “positional good” that helps them display their status as either “above” social media usage or as someone who is living a particular set of politics.

Or, as actor Raiin Wilson puts it:

Portwood-Stacer’s research also showed that people tended to have negative connotations of people who quit social media. The most common perceptions people had about friends who quit were:

1. The quitter was engaging in a political/activist act. Some viewed this favorably, but most thought there were other ways to show those same politics.
2. People were upset because they thought that the quitter did not value their friendship. Since most people share personal details on social media, they felt that someone choosing not to read their updates meant the quitter was closing off an important part of their communication.
3. People thought the quitter was an elitist who thought they were better than everyone else, and perhaps not surprisingly, had negative connotations with the quitter.
4. People though the quitter was just seeking attention, either in the form of people begging them not to leave the platform/asking what is wrong, or allowing their presence to be more notable when they inevitably returned.