Human Behavior and Social Networks: Twitter and Instagram as Case Studies

Human behavior describes the way in which human beings act and interact; and it is influenced by several factors including genetic makeup and sociocultural factors. The influence of technology, especially social media on human life has brought about tremendous changes in human behavior. These changes cut across several areas of human interaction, affecting the way we work, play, learn, communicate and do business. Social networks hold great implications for radical changes in the future in terms of human behavior. We now live in an era of hyperconnectivity; hyperconnectivity is the phenomenon of society always connected through networks, readily accessible, interactive and information-rich. Social media is transforming human life, social interaction and communication bringing about changes in all aspects of human behavior and introducing new ways of doing almost everything.

There are various implications social networking has for human behavior. In the area of Mental Development, Learning and Cognition, with the use of social networks and internet media, young people (and human beings in general) have been given the ability to broaden their mental scope, increase their mental ability and develop the skill of multitasking. Previously, humans mainly used memorization for learning but these days in the era of social networking, we learn more as we deal with processing a high level of simultaneous information. Looking to the future, one of the major impacts of social networks will be the way we learn. Learning which was mainly by reading and memorization will evolve and hence will entail the ability to collaborate, search and extract knowledge.

The way humans relate with one another and with the events that occur around them is another facet of our living that has been greatly affected by social networks. The concepts of “family” and “friends” are being redefined. Nowadays, we have the opportunity to connect with people that we have little or no knowledge of who they are in real life. These days, the start of a friendship can be as simple as sending a direct message to a random person we fancy on Twitter or Instagram. This is a great advancement on how things were before where friendship was limited to family ties and social gatherings. Social networking has created a platform that brings together people who share the same personal interests and these people form groups where they share their ideas, thoughts and insights amongst themselves.

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Communication amongst humans is another facet of our living that has been greatly affected by social network. Social networking sites have done a lot to evolve the way we communicate. If individuals were capable of close interaction with roughly 100 people previously, mostly family members, work colleagues, religious body members and club partners, in the age of social networking we have the ability to reach thousands of people through the links established with acquaintances made on sites like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram and many others.

As seen above, social networks have completely revolutionized every single facet of our living; including our way of thinking and how we react to the events that occur around us. Twitter and Instagram are two social networks that have absolutely taken the world by storm. Almost everything can be done on these two apps; from posting pictures and videos to advertising business incentives to even just posting your random thoughts and opinions on any subject matter. These two apps have an active user count of 1.3 Billion with Instagram having 1 Billion and Twitter 321 Million. There is such a large difference between their individual user counts and the major factor in this is the way the apps are used. Instagram is limited to multimedia posts i.e. pictures and videos but on Twitter, a user is able to post text posts as well as pictures and videos. These days, people tend to copy a lot from what they see and watch on social media, and then an interface like Instagram filled with an array of pictures and videos will tend to attract more users than Twitter because it looks and feels more vibrant than all other networks. People also tend to see Twitter as a boring and “too mature” app because it is mostly used by older people. But then on Twitter, a user has unbelievable reach. Your posts, called tweets, can be seen by any and almost every user on the app and this is why business organizations tend to advertise more on Twitter than any other network. As much good as these networks have done in our world today, they have done some bad as well; people tend to have unrealistic expectations about themselves and others around them. They develop a form of anxiety known as FOMO which means Fear of Missing Out which basically implies that they want to experience the thrills and fun they see people having on social media too. And the worst of them all, general addiction. This is very bad because when this begins to develop, people begin to think that all their happiness and joy stems from what people think about them and then they feel rejection and get sad and depressed over something as little as a person unfollowing them. A good way to combat all these negative effects would be trying to limit how much of our lives is invested in our social network accounts.

In spite of all the negative effects social networking has had on human living and behavior, it has still done some unbelievable good and it pretty much balances it all out. It all depends on how an individual makes use of it. Also, we should never forget that social networking is not real life and that a clear boundary should be set on how much of our lives are showcased on our different accounts. Social networking is redefining human living and we all must try to embrace it rather than shun it because it is doing great wonders.