How Does Social Media Affects Our Happiness - Research Paper Example

Happiness and Social Media Introduction Happiness is an important aspect of human lives and their existence. Happiness is directly related to pleasure and is affected by many factors, which are involuntary and voluntary. These factors could either be wealth related, health related or imbedded in our genes. More interesting, however, is the realization that through watching others, the likelihood of us generating more happiness is very high. According to Martin (22), happiness is “the entirety of the desirable subjective aspects of a person, as distinct from ‘objective’ features such as wealth, status and virtue” (22). We get happier when our friends are happy, and in a chain of friendship, we get happy when our friends’ friends get happy. It spreads across the board, not necessarily with people coming into contact with one another. Social media has become part of our lives, and people cannot do without it. Many people rely on it for information while others use it as a platform to express their emotions and feelings. Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are a source of happiness to us. This paper looks at how social media sites affect our happiness by making us happier. Discussion The social media has given its users a platform for sharing what goes on in their lives. The social media sites offer people an opportunity to spread news, films and pictures about themselves. Through social media, people get into contact with old friends. They can initiate discussions and dialogue through Facebook and come up with groups of people with the same interests or likes. Through social media, people can interact with companies and other organizations, whether governmental and otherwise (Leif et al. 8). Social media has opened a new avenue for propaganda, where people holding different views find one another and influence the world in a big way. On social media such as Facebook, people chat and do other activities that are used to attract other people’s attention. Facebook users can write on one another’s wall and send personalized messages that are non-public. Confidentiality in the personalized messages can be enhanced. Users can check into different places depending on their current location, making users who are close, know of their presence. They can arrange for meetings or initiate a chat with one another. Social media makes communication between the users more transparent and more accessible in the sense that different users can find out what their friends are doing and can easily contact them. The main purpose of users of social media is to keep track of user activities on their social network. Most people use the social media to connect with friends and family through status updates, uploading pictures and updating status. Through its increasing popularity, people are more connected with one another, and this makes the online users happier than the offline users who do not share in the fun. Social media gives people an opportunity to compare one’s individual identity with the society. According to Leif et al., “social networking has become so fundamental that we become human beings first when wen we interact with other people” (10). This shows the high dependency of people on the social media and how much influence it has on people’s lives. We develop our personalized identity in the interactions that we have from these sites, and they help us make sense of ourselves. We identify ourselves differently, for example, self-perception which refers to the image that we have of ourselves. Self-esteem is the assessment of individual self-worth and self-confidence is how we believe in our abilities. Other people act as mirrors in which we continuously reflect ourselves. We generally compare our achievements and our failures with those of our friends. How happy we are and the things bringing happiness to us –we compare them with other people who we contact with. Social media is a good platform for this. Users compare their successes with other people’s and especially their close friends or people they have close contact with. There is no better joy when comparing how old friends have been fairing in life, and having an individualized comparison with other people (Gonzales and Hancock 79). Social media gives people an opportunity to reintroduce themselves to one another after a long time of separation or silence as new people. To people that were once part of our lives, for example, when we were kids or in junior school, or maybe even high school, social media gives the opportunity of meeting again and rekindling the old friendship through re-introduction. The beauty of this re-introduction is that people do this in reference to their new selves and the current status they are in. This is a source of happiness, as people learn the successes of their friends. Social media does not only give us the opportunity to re-unite with our old friends or keep track of our friends but also allows us to meet and know new people, people we never knew previously. New contacts can be generated through social media, some of which lead to lifetime relationships while others set solid foundations for lifetime business partners. People are happier if they are able to realize themselves. Self-realization is a key to happiness as a person gets to understand who they are and their ability to achieve full potential. Happiness is a means for self-realization. Slater defines happiness as a resultant effect of self-realization (86). Both self-realization and happiness go together; they work hand-in-hand and are closely related. One cannot be separated from the other. Self-realization is a process that occurs in the life of a person from birth to maturity. It is only through metamorphic cycles of life that people come to self-realization and understand themselves better. It is not until a person has fully gone through the metamorphosis of life that capability of self-realization happens to them. The ultimate impact of self-realization is personal understanding of physiological needs, need for security, social affiliations, respect and belonging. People who have exhibited the qualities of self-realization possess the characteristics of efficiency in their perception about reality and are more comfortable. Self-realized people generally accept other people and exhibit simplicity in their lives, and are non-defensive. They are more self-centered rather than ego-centered. They are calm, cool and composed and show no characteristics of arrogance. They have positive appreciation of things in life and have a genuine desire to help other people (Slater 87). Facebook, as a social network site, is a tool for self-realization, as noted by Gonzales and Hancock (82). According to Kenny, “there is a link between the use of Facebook and positive emotions” (5). Social sites are a source of positive change among their users since they offer unlimited interaction among people all over the world. According to Gonzales and Hancock (82), information posted on the wall of a user enhances self-esteem, which is a factor in self-realization. This is especially the case when the information presented is edited or has been misrepresented intentionally to make it more appealing to the viewers. Appreciation by other users is a factor that contributes to increased self-realization. Although this does not improve an individual’s motivational levels, self-realization leads to people’s happiness. When more people appreciate these updates, the owners of the updates feel more appreciated and this is a reason for improved happiness. There is a correlation between the number of Facebook friends and happiness, notes Kenny (6). The more friends a person has on a social network site, the more their level of happiness. This is attributed to the diverse interaction between people of different nature. The more the number of friends a user has, the more the likelihood of appreciation. More people are likely to post positive messages on the wall of the user, making them feel more appreciated, and this improves their level of happiness. There exists a positive correlation between social media usage and personality traits such as extraversion, un-conscientiousness and narcissism (Kenny 7). Extraversion predicts a higher frequency of Facebook usage and the higher levels of social media activity. The use of social media has no limit to the people who can use them, as un-conscientious people portray higher levels of social media usage and portray tendencies of addiction. Narcissism shows increased levels of social network activity in the online community and posting of more self-promoting content in several aspects of the social network sites. Male people use social media as a means of self-promotion and are likely to post more personal information than female counterparts. The notion of this is that male users find more happiness in promotion themselves on social sites that make them feel more confident and basically more appreciated. The more the number of people appreciating a person’s updates, the more the person’s level of happiness. Happiness increases with online appreciation (Kenny 20). Part-time employees are happier when they engage in social sites than full-time employees due to time usage. Part-time workers have a lot of free time for themselves which they mostly idle. By involving in social media, they find more happiness in it apart from being idle. This phenomenon explains the reasons why there is more social site involvement of part-time workers than full-time employees. Conclusion Social media is fun, as every user will acknowledge. While it gives people an opportunity to interact with one another, the interactions give birth to a whole new experience of happiness and joy. Many people are now dependent on social media and need it for everything that they desire. By virtue of its robust usage, it is not possible to ignore social media. Media houses and companies, organizations, politicians and celebrities have made it a good platform to reach out to their people. It is growing at a rapid pace and its benefits cannot be underestimated. Most people are now happier in their lives through social media, while others are pleased by being online and knowing that they are part of a community. More people find happiness in the social media for various reasons and more people are appreciating the impact that social media has had in their lives as a form of interaction and improving our happiness. Works Cited Gonzales, Army, and Jeffrey T. Hancock. Mirror, Mirror on my Facebook Wall: Effects of Exposure to Facebook on Self-Estee. 2011. Print. Kenny, Andrew. Facebook: The Effect on Happiness and Its Attraction to Users. 2012. Web. http://esource.dbs.ie/bitstream/handle/10788/368/ba_a_kenny_2012.pdf?sequence=1. Leif, Denti, Isak Barbopoulos, Ida Nilsson, Linda Holmberg, Magdalena Thulin, Malin Wendebladlisa, and Anden Emelie Davidsson. Sweden?s Largest Facebook Study. Gothenburg Research Institute, 2012. Print. Martin, Mike W. Happiness and the Good Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print. Slater, Jennifer. A Theological Anthropology of Self-Realization. AuthorHouse, 2012. Print. Read More