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.'"

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 [wikipedia.org].

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.

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.

friends list envy

[Lazarian]

"and while they may have 50, 100, 200 friends they will mockingly see that you have a pathetically small number" I'd rather have 10 or so people who are worth communicating with than 200 who I could barely keep up with. Most people who have enormous lists of friends probably view themselves as being in a popularity contest anyway.

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: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.

Re:50 friends

[Analogy Man]

It has been said that if you need more than one hand to count your true friends, you should consider yourself blessed.

Of course this definition of friend is the sort that would bring you chicken soup when you had the flu, help you dig an old oil tank out of your yard, take your kids up to their cabin so you could have a quite weekend with your spouse, help you get through the loss of a family member or divorce...

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.

I don't get it...

[mdm-adph]

I revel in the fact that I have a small number of friends on Facebook -- to me, it means that the friends I have listed are close associates, and not shallow acquaintances like someone who has hundreds.

I may be old fashioned...

[Temtongkek]

I understand that these SNS are growing to a point where people are interested in analyzing the psychology behind them, but I still need to ask... What ever happened to meeting people in real life? What ever happened to "ring...ring... Hey, it's (name), let's grab a beer after work?" While I'm not qualified to go any deeper than casual, day-to-day observations, it's just astounding to me that so many people are placing that much emphasis on a certain arrangement of 1's and 0's that are interpreted a certain way through computers and networks. I have friends in real life. Granted, I even have a few that I talk to online, mostly because they live overseas. However, I still make damn sure to keep weekly, if not daily contact with my nearest and dearest here in the red, white and blue. This whole "I have more friends than you" bullshit is... well, exactly that, bullshit. GO OUT AND MAKE REAL FRIENDS. BEING SOCIAL AND FRIENDLY MAKES YOU MORE REAL FRIENDS. (and quite possibly gets you laid. ;) Just my 2 cents. I would like change back. heh.

My Facebook experience

[thewils]

A friend sent me a link for his Facebook profile. The link wouldn't work unless I was registered with the site myself. What a crock of shit I thought, as I declined to join.

Re:Executive Summary

[Mr_Silver]

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.

MySpace has a significant advantage over facebook - that is the length of time it has been running and the user base. People will put up with something that isn't so great if all their friends are using it (insert IM client you think is lousy here).

If MySpace and facebook launched at the same time today - it wouldn't surprise me if facebook would be more popular.

Re:50 friends

[Threni]

50 friends, or some space on a server allocated to an array of 50 strings of alphanumeric characters? There is a difference. What's the point of Facebook again?

Re:The real reason

[kaleco]

I find social networking (in my case using Bebo) to be an excellent way of keeping in touch with casual acquaintences, like people I work beside, friends who have moved away or general people I don't really have a need to phone. Some people treat friends like Pokemon cards, and the sites certainly encourage this. When you log in to Bebo you're presented with an 'Updates' page which shows the latest developments in your contacts' social arms race- a list of who's added who to their friends list. However, I'm content to just use it as a way to keep in touch with my colleagues. Cheaper than a text message too.

Re:Who Cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, who honestly cares whether someone has got 400 friends or 40, obviously it goes back to the old school days of "I've got more friends than you" but surely we've grown out of it - haven't we?

In my experience, people only grow out of it if they have to. When given the option, most people will gladly stay at that high school level of emotional development for the rest of their lives.

Avoiding Social Failure...

[puppetman]

If there is a fear of social failure, then wouldn't people avoid Facebook if they suspected that other hold a low opinion of them?

As for the 300 "friends" argument - I have little time in real life for people outside work who aren't good friends. I certainly don't have time to maintain tenuous relationships electronically with people I barely know or barely remember. It's the quality of your friendships, not the quantity.

Quality vs Quantity

[Rik Sweeney]

and while they may have 50, 100, 200 friends they will mockingly see that you have a pathetically small number

I'll take quality over quantity any day of the week

Re:The real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

I treat sites like that as Dweeb detectors. You haveto be some kind of dweeb that is not interesting to need everyone to come to you with a big counter of the number of friends you have.

I am a member on at least 30 forums as well as email groups and usnet threads and have many friends out there built the old fashoned way. IRC,USENET, and participation in discussions.

This crap that is the "social" websites today are utter crap. Get on a biking forum, fishing forum, monkey spanking forum and talk. posting useless drivel to a website and adding every stranger that comes along to your friends list is simply sad.

I'd rather have...

[Fyre2012]

... 5 good friends over 100+ 'Facebook' friends anyday.

Re:Quality vs Quantity

[zegota]

Agreed. I have never, EVER heard anyone brag about how many facebook friends they had. Maybe this is something more common in junior high and high school, but in college, it's used as social interaction, not as a status symbol. At least in my experience.

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.

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.

Re:low friend count?

[vux984]

I will often add people I have just met because I hope that I will get to know them better in the future (possibly through Facebook).

Really... you go to a friends house a 1000 miles away, and he has his buddy over for like an hour one night, and you'd add him to your friends list... so you know if you ever wanted to call him up you could... or if you wanted to show him pictures of your vacation you could... or because you wanted to check out his vacation pictures... or the pictures of his kids (who you didn't meet) playing soccer?

I mean come on...

Sure if you meet someone and you hit it off and you genuinely want to pursue a friendship... sure go for it... add away... but when you are sitting their adding people you barely know who you'll never see again... whats the point...?

Or if you've been doing this for a few months now, rationalizing that "you'll get to know them better in the future", and your adding another 'friend' while looking at the list of 150 other people you added for exactly the same reason, none of whom you ever called. And even if you wanted to get to know them better well the logistics don't work... you only have 4 free nights a week... so even if you did something 'meaningful' with one every available night... it would still take over 2 years to get through the list...once. And that's if you stop adding people now.

I have better things to do than facebook. Like hang out with my friends.

Re:low friend count?

[theuedimaster]

I think all of you are missing the point here by going after people with high number of friends, and justifying those with a low number of friends (let's say 300 vs. 30). I keep reading posts about people who say they want to keep a low number of close friends on facebook, and that anybody who goes about facebook "friendship" differently is somehow insecure and inferior.

Facebook is a social networking app. That's it. That's all folks. Who says it's gotta be for best friends only? What if it is a social gathering place altogether by itself? Meaning... why does it have to reflect what you do in "real" life? That's why half of you guys play WOW or Second Life or something of that sort... Why can't facebook be separate? What's so wrong about keeping track of the people you've met? Doing this might give more meaning to meetings, and for godsakes, what's wrong with meeting more people? In the real world, you might brush by someone once or twice before they disappear from your memory. There's nothing wrong with making a little note that says - hey, i met you once!

In the end, facebook is what you make of it. Whether you have many friends on it, or just your close buddies, it doesn't matter. You are all justified.

Re:Executive Summary

[xTantrum]

This article is retarded. facebook works because it already caters to young people who spend all their time online anyway and an excellent way to keep in touch with friends.

it works for older people because its an excellent way to get in touch with old classmates and it works for business because its a already established market XOR demographics to advertise.

this article sounds like its written who doesn`t know ish about online communities or the youth or today and the internet`s impact on it, and it being on slashdot just sounds like an excuse for geeks to talk about something cool when probably the majority on here aren`t on it.

mod me down, i`m not here to make ``friends`` on slashdot - ANOTHER ONLINE COMMUNITY!