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Media Analysis Paper #2: Connecting Via Social Media

Tyler Hallman

Media in Everyday Life

Dr. Arke

6 April 2018
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In the current American culture, a large dependence for social media to develop and

maintain connections has emerged. Rather than maintaining connections through written mail,

phone calls, or face-to-face conversation, social media interaction, on platforms such as

Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram, is now the main way through which connections

are managed. However, not only does social media provide instantaneous access to friends;

social media also provides instantaneous access to people all across the globe that an individual

would not normally be able to reach. According to Mathew Ingram in his article, “The Facebook

Armageddon”, Facebook has “more than 2 billion users every month” (Ingram, 89). This means

that at any given second of the day, every Facebook user has the capacity to communicate with

one of 2 billion other users from all over the world. The number of users and the ability to easily

access those users makes social media the simplest, most convenient method of connection

development available to mankind.

Through the various social media platforms, individuals can glimpse into the lives of

their friends and acquaintances despite the distance separating them. Facebook and Twitter allow

people to post their thoughts as often as they please to hundreds of friends and followers at a

time; Instagram allows people to view the photos of their friends and family, vicariously living

through their photographs of events, locations, people, and memories; and Snapchat allows

individuals to send a combination of selfies and text/captions to one person at a time, resulting in

the ability to maintain relationships in a more intentional, private, and personal manner. For

these reasons, social media platforms such as those listed above allow for the opportunity for

people to efficiently and successfully connect with other individuals.

However, social media allows for more than just relational connections. In addition to

social media connecting individuals to each other, it also creates connections between people and
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advertisements, fake news or news that has been framed in a certain way, and a world in which

they do not need to stand by what they say. These other connections are damaging and should

not be nurtured. Because of just how damaging and easily accessible these other connections can

be, the usage of social media for the purposes of relational connection between individuals may

inherently create weak bonds that only exist out of the convenience of the communication. It is

conceivable that the negative connections made possible by social media outweigh the potential

for meaningful relational connection between users.

Mathew Ingram addresses the first of these three damaging connections caused by social

media in his article, “The Facebook Armageddon”. Ingram states that social media platforms

accrue most of their revenue from advertisements, revealing that Facebook, the largest of all

social medias, and Google alone “will account for close to 85% of the global digital ad market

this year and will take most of the growth in that market” (Ingram, 90). This does not only mean

that other digital competitors of Facebook will begin to plummet financially due to having a very

small portion of the digital ad market, but also means that Facebook users will be exposed to an

enormous number of advertisements.

Exposure to such a large number of advertisements over a long period of time can cause

users to become distracted from the world in which they live and those around them, thus

inhibiting them from establishing future connections. People can only manage so many

connections, and if the connection between user and advertisements becomes too grand and

overwhelming, the ability for users to establish and maintain connections with others via social

media will be impaired. If the commonly agreed upon reason for social media is to stay

connected with individuals, yet users are too distracted to connect with individuals, then the
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reason for social media is not being met. Therefore, an abundance of advertisements defeats the

purpose of social media altogether, as it distracts users from connecting with others.

In addition to social media connecting users to advertisements, it can also connect users

to fake news or news that has been designed to cause an individual to think a certain way. In her

article, “New Media, New Relationship to Participation?”, Stephanie Edgerly addresses this type

of connection. Through her study of how youth involved in social media engage with the news,

Edgerly discovered that a large portion of young social media users “eschew traditional forms of

news content and instead…[turn] to social media websites and online news aggregators to learn

about news and current events” (Edgerly, 206). Inherently, if one turns to social media for news,

he/she is subjecting their opinions to the idea of “confirmation bias, [or] the human desire to

believe things that confirm our existing beliefs, even if they are untrue” (Ingram, 92), because

the news that social media presents to its users is based on engagement, not on quality or value.

Edgerly continues in her study, stating that most social media users are “exposed to news content

on the basis of decisions made by their friends and peers, as well as by complex algorithms that

governs which content comes across their feeds” (Edgerly 206). The news that users receive has

been predetermined to come across their feed because of the algorithms within the social media

platform regardless of the accuracy of that news. Because of the nature of social media, there is a

very high likelihood that those who obtain their news from social media are obtaining fake or

misleading information. This connection that social media establishes between users and news

information is ultimately unhealthy, creating misinformed, falsely educated world citizens.

On top of the unhealthy connections that social media creates between users and both

advertisements and fake news, social media also connects users to a world in which they do not

need to stand by what they say. In her article discussing a discourse approach to social media,
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Gwen Bouvier states that language in social media ceases to be subjectivized (Bouvier, 151).

Unlike human interaction and communication in the real world, social media allows a place in

where users can “intervene [in discussion] and then disappear, and can simply unhook if they do

not like a response or want to escape the consequences of what they have said” (Bouvier 151).

This world of no consequence that social media creates can make virtual relationships fake and

inhuman. A person’s profile on a social media platform acts as a wall of confidence and

confidentiality behind which their true personality can hide. If a relationship has formed around

these walls of confidence and confidentiality, then the relationship is not really between the two

users, but rather between the two users’ false identities. The fact that language and

communication results in no real consequence and that a user can assume any personality and

identity change while on social media means that it is very difficult for a meaningful relationship

between two individuals to actually develop and flourish.

Although social media in and of itself can be a source of easy, convenient, and successful

connection between individuals, there are also drawbacks that cause those relationships to lose

meaning. The connections that social media establish between users and advertisements, fake

and misleading news, and a world of no consequence can negatively impact the virtual bonds

between two users, causing those bonds to be insecure, fragile, and ultimately meaningless.

Because of this, it is very difficult to maintain a healthy, worthwhile relationship through social

media alone despite all of its properties and aspects that would, in theory, allow for quality social

connections. However, if both users within a virtual relationship ignore the potential negative

ideals that social media can connect them to, then the possibility for meaningful relationship still

stands true.
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Works Cited

Bouvier, Gwen. “What is a discourse approach to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social:

connecting with other academic fields.” Journal of Multicultural Discourses, vol. 10, no.

2, July 2015, pp. 149-162., doi: 10.1080/17447143.2015.1042381.

Edgerly, Stephanie, et al. “New Media, New Relationship to Participation? A Closer Look at

Youth News Repertoires and Political Participation.” Journalism & Mass Communication

Quarterly, vol. 95, no. 1, 2018, pp. 192-212.,

doi: o0r.g1/107.171/1770/71707679699091071770055928

Ingram, Mathew. “The Facebook Armageddon.” Columbia Journalism Review, vol. 57, no. 1,

2018, pp. 88-95.,

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