On Social āMediaā Influence
Due to the popularity of social media, anyone can be an influencer on their own right. A study by Garcia, et al. (2017) suggested that social influence on social media platforms such as Twitter is mainly related to popularity. But how do social media influencers hold influence aside from their popularity?
Social influence shapes behavior. It happens when one person causes another change in behavior because of the demands of the social environment (Myers, 2013). It is basically the most common thing that we experience ā we speak and think because we learned from others. As Aristotle said, we, humans are social beings. There are different areas of social influence, but one that I observed is clearly related to social media influence is conformity.
Image: Psychologist World
As Myers (2013) put it, conformity happens as a result of real or imagined group pressure. Conformity is not evidently a group pressure, per se, but because of what we see in social media, we unconsciously conform and align our social media behaviors with others. Once everybody else conforms, you conform. Once everybody shares a video or a meme, you share it too. Sometimes it gets more and more ridiculous and just plain funny. But as we all know; conformity does not only happen in social media. It happens every day and we see it all the time ā at school, at home and basically, everywhere, conformity happens. Social influence persists.
This is a story from when I was in high school when the internet is not as prominent as it is now. Most of my classmates liked to eat at this particular food stall, which I didnāt see the appeal. I saw every classmate of mine eating dumplings, so I tried them. Then, as time progressed, most of my friends from other sections started eating dumplings from this stall, up until the stall packed with students waiting for the delicious dumplings. But after a while, everything subsided, everybody did not want to eat dumplings anymore suddenly.
In my own thoughts, without conformity, you may feel alone. We tend to be socially influenced because we donāt want to feel āout of placeā. I guess this is natural human insecurity; everybody wants to āfit inā the group. I experienced this when I noticed how everyone enjoyed the dumplings. I felt like I cannot relate to my classmates anymore since it felt like I am the only one who never tried it. Remember, āFaceAppā? Why did you use it? Because everyone else is using it and posting photos using it. In other words, you do not want to be āleft outā. It is somehow like the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) phenomenon.
Social Influence could also be related to availability heuristic but not directly. An availability heuristic is a mental shortcut in which a person relies on the immediate examples that come to mind (Myers, 2013). When people ask you, āWhere do you want to eat?ā We have the tendency to say āWherever you wantā because we get tired of thinking of an answer that we rely on available information. In this case, whenever you say āWherever you wantā, you are giving that person the opportunity to socially influence you. Some social media influencers use this to their advantage ā sometimes because of their huge following, their words become influential that it becomes an absolute truth. Heck, even politicians use this as their advantage, the ātrust meā phenomenon, as I like to call it. I am a politician, so you have to trust me kind of thinking ā and because of availability heuristic instead of using rationalization to identify whether the information is correct, we tend to accept it as it is because it is already available.Ā
But is conformity bad or good? Are āsocial media influencersā use āusā to an advantage?
Well, to be honest, there is no scientific answer to these questions. But basing it on the values and situations that we are put in, it is at times bad and at times good. I guess it all boils down to what or who you let influence you. In all honesty, we all have influencers in our lives and it is we who decide who influences us. Whether it be a social media influencer, a politician, your immediate family, you are influenced. But remember ā who influences us reflect our values as a person.
Social influence can be seen in everyday phenomena. Life is full of influence. As human beings, we tend to be influenced by behaviors that conform to the group. Itās just a human thing to do.
Garcia, D., Mavrodiev, P., Casati, D., & Schweitzer, F. (2017). Understanding Popularity, Reputation, and Social Influence in the Twitter Society. Policy & Internet, 9(3). doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.151
Myers, D. G. (2013). Social Psychology (11th ed.). New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
