The Psychology of Facebook Examined

jg21 writes "In this analysis of the psychology of Facebook, a British FB user makes some telling points about how simple the reasons behind its success are. Among them, fear of 'online social failure' features prominently. From the article: 'Facebook also digs away at the insecurities in people...your peers can see your profile on Facebook, and while they may have 50, 100, 200 friends they will mockingly see that you have a pathetically small number, confirming your worst fears about the low opinion they have probably held of you over all those years etc.'"

Comments

Executive Summary

[eldavojohn]

So I think the only thing worth mentioning from this article is something that's obvious to the youth but apparently not so obvious to the older crowd--that younger people today use social networking sites (like Facebook) as a kind of status symbol.

That's about it.

Now, the author could go on to discuss the quality of those friends or some deeper psychological impact that this has on youth today (you know, like the title might lead you to believe). But, unfortunately, the second part reads more like an ad for Facebook than even an objective quantifiable analysis at what makes it better than other sites. I enjoyed this gem:

FR looks AWFUL. Not in a vile MySpace way, but in a "My first attempt at HTML" way. Facebook is slick and so 2007. Friends Reunited is clunky and basic, so 1997. There is no way any self-respecting net user is going to evangelise about FR. So you claim that the looks are disgusting but not bad like MySpace (which is possibly the most successful social site so far) but bad like "My first attempt at HMTL" ... like all the customized pages on MySpace? I'm so confused, if you're going to knock them for bad looks, don't compare them to the top dog. Obviously looks don't make or break a social networking site. In fact, I would wager that marketing (movies have their own MySpace pages now, what?) has much more to do with it than usability or functionality.

Well, that sounds pretty opinionated and also very unhelpful. After reading this article selling Facebook, I feel like I need to use Facebook for social networking but I don't even know why ...

They also criticize ad placement in Facebook with a graphic that reads: "Facebook Ads! Yuck!" while on their site I notice a top banner, a left hand 'ads by Google' and also Advertisement boxes on the right. Um, you probably want to lay off the way that Facebook earns their income, especially when A) you say they're great for being 'free' and B) the site you publish on is using the same method.

So, a borderline Slashvertisement that is hilariously hypocritical and undertakes a psychological analysis of users on a social networking site without doing any surveys or real research that is often necessary to be able to say anything about your 'psychological studies' since any assumptions in the field can be as crazy as Sigmund Freud's Penis Envy Complex.

In this analysis of the psychology of Facebook, a British FB user makes some telling points about how simple the reasons behind its success are. No, no it does not. It is not an 'analysis' even by the loosest sense of the word & it certainly does nothing more than bash sites I've never heard about and avoid tackling the biggest obstacles for Facebook (MySpace and the zombie-back-from-the-grave-Friendster). Things must be awfully different between here and England for this to be frontpaged on Slashdot.

I'm going to go ahead and give this article an F and ask for the last ten minutes of my life back.

Re:Executive Summary

[Xeirxes]

The interesting difference between Facebook and MySpace, for me, is that most of my friends on MySpace aren't really friends... just kind of a collection. On Facebook, my friends are the people I really care about and like to talk to a lot. I see many of them more than once a week. I guess there are different friend strategies for everyone, but I don't feel that the friend collection is the norm.

The real reason

[Jaaay]

behind the success of all SN sites is most people prefer to sit at home sending messages to everyone they may or may not know instead of picking up the phone. It's more impersonal so people find it easier to waste time casually instead of calling up 30 people and going out so much.

Re:The real reason

[HTH NE1]

With all the comparing of friend-counts as a measure of social status, I treat Facebook and other social networking sites like a game of Global Thermonuclear War: the only way to win is not to play.

Or, to paraphrase an old military recruitment campaign slogan, all I need is a few good friends.

low friend count?

[SolusSD]

I have around 70 facebook friends- most of which happen to be real friends. Anyone with 200/300+ facebook friends is most likely just adding anyone they know.

Re:Friends

[sqrt(2)]

Too fucking true.

I only have 12 friends on facebook because...I only have twelve friends that USE facebook. I don't just add random people because they're from the same school/region, and I don't accept request from the same.

Wow

[Mr_Silver]

Facebook also digs away at the insecurities in people...your peers can see your profile on Facebook, and while they may have 50, 100, 200 friends they will mockingly see that you have a pathetically small number, confirming your worst fears about the low opinion they have probably held of you over all those years etc.

So just like real life then.

As in, there are some people who think that the number of friends you have (however rare you see, speak or do anything with them) is more important than a smaller number of quality friends who you see, speak and socialise with more often.

Re:Friends

[Lurker2288]

To be fair, though, one of my friends has tons of people on her Facebook page, and when I called her on it, she pointed out that a lot of random classmates/friends of friends/desperate guys sent her friend requests, and she would rather take the low cost step of adding them as a friend, rather than rejecting them and generating ill will. I guess you could classify that as insecurity, but personally I think it's a normal social reaction, given that it takes pretty much no effort/energy/thought to add someone as a friend.