The psychology behind social networks: the unwritten code of behavior

Popular people on networks: how do they achieve this and what is their goal?

Social networks are a means of social communication that focuses on establishing contact with other members via the Internet. This technological advancement has given us the opportunity to forge new relationships that sometimes end up becoming important friendships in our lives.

We go back to the mid-1990s when AOL (America Online) and BBS (Bulletin Board System), the first two social websites in the history of the Internet, appeared. The first of these has been in the doldrums for years, or as we would say in social networks, "has gone out of fashion". In this ever-changing world, few will last more than a decade.

The second is a system that allowed in its day the creation of the first forums and today is still used by millions of people, even though it has been surpassed in functionality by its competitors.

A paradigm shift: The weirdoes

The fact that we all use social networks leads us to think that first of all, if you don't use them, you are different from the rest, if you don't use them, you are different from the rest. We can all contrast that in class we have had that classmate who does not have any social profile and we look at him as the "weirdo" because he is not up to date, but really maybe he does not have the need or has not had the opportunity, however this leads us to judge him when sometimes we do not even know him.

Social networks nowadays are used more than two hours on average per person, this means that we have stopped doing things to spend our time interacting and creating communities on the Internet.What has changed and what motivations have led us to do so?

The motivations we have when giving "Like".

How many times has it happened to us that we have clicked "Like", "Share" or "Re-Tweet" someone for the mere fact that we want them to remember us or to return the interaction when we upload a photo or share a status?

Let's not kid ourselves, we've all done it more than once.

This fact is due to the fact that social networks feed our ego and our self-esteem, and in this world where more and moreAnd in this world where there are more and more individuals, we need to satisfy our needs in some way and stand out from the average in order to "be somebody".

Social networks give us the opportunity to put on a mask and be someone else (or pretend to be who we are not) or, for example, to create anonymous or fake profiles and make new friends. All these opportunities are used to socialize, which is the original goal of social networks.

Is being "popular" on social networks equivalent to being popular in real life?

A computer engineer conducted an experiment a little over a year ago, creating a computer program that performed the "Like" action on every photo that appeared on his Instagram feed.

That experiment resulted in:

• Every day he got 30 new followers
• He was invited to more parties
• More people stopped him on the street because they saw him on Instagram.

But the most surprising thing that supports the aforementioned theory, is that his friends were asking him to upload more photos because they felt an obligation to give him back these "Likes" that he had been giving in an automated way and without criteria.

Human beings are social animals by nature and in many cases we feel obliged to return the actions received in networks.

We can see the same effect applied on Twitter, where people use the technique of massively following other users, hoping that these users, without knowing them at all, will return the interaction, and it works quite well because the ratio is quite high.

Following random users on Twitter, has a return of between 10 and 30% depending on the interests of users. That's the bottom line.

Conclusions

Social networks help to increase (or decrease) the ego and self-esteem of their users. Many of these users feel indebted to the people who have followed them or interacted with them.This has created a "code of behavior" that is not written anywhere but has become widespread in social networks and is accepted by the vast majority of users.

The popularity of people in social networks is nowadays transmitted to reality, gaining them more power of influence over others.

As a final insightwe can say that the online world (Internet, social networks...) and the offline world offline world (real life) are coming together more and more and will end up being treated as a single entity.