When looking at the impacts of (non-human factors) on culture as a whole, it is hard to

overlook the impact that social media has started to develop on our society today. There has

been a cultural shift when it comes to widespread use, social interaction between individuals,

and the manifestation of sub cultures that can derive from the use of social media. Society has

seen a shift in depressive behaviors, a change in psychological communitive participation, and a

change in self-perception as well. When we dive deeper as a society it becomes apparent that

social media has unsurprisingly developed the ability to interconnect people across cultures and

bring them together through common mediums. The notion that cultures are physical places or

things that people can bond over is no longer the reality. People can now bond over similar

subject matter and connect with people around the globe. People can now share experiences

with others around the world and have a following of people read of them. The ideology of

being born into a culture no longer needs to be held true because people have gained the

ability to be influenced and learn from other cultures around the globe. It has become those

differences in cultures, other than race, that are affected differently when it comes to the use

of social media and social networking. So, when looking at it, the development of social media

has turned into a living and adapting creation that can fulfill the basic needs that humans have.

Each need can be satisfied differently across the ever-expansive spectrum of cultures. The

growth and expansion of social media helps tailor to the needs of each individual across all

cultures.

All the needs a human is dependent on can be found on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

The first that can be drawn parallel between media and the hierarchy is the need of esteem.

Society no longer needs to be in the physical presence of others to feel the feeling of esteem,

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positive or negative. A study found that social media has led to an increase in social

comparisons on social media. Amongst some cultures, but primarily youths, there has been an

increase in negative self-image due to the increase in social comparisons. Early social

comparison research from Vogel et al. found that, “Some prior research has revealed that high-

frequency Facebook use is associated with increased depression and decreased well-being.”

(2014). Vogel continues to theorize that people who consistently use social networking sites in

their daily lives are more likely to have poorer self-esteem, and are more likely to fall under

upward social comparison. There have been recent findings to suggest that collectivist cultures

vs. independent cultures have a bigger impact on self-image than previously mentioned.

Between the two types of cultures, the individualistic cultures have more inclination to

promote their interdependent self because it greatly affects their well-being while, “It is clear

that social comparison is built into the fabric of collectivism because these comparisons are

necessary for defining the self relationally, creating strong ingroups and outgroups; and

assessing one’s status relative to others in the group, all of which are characteristics of

collectivist cultures.” (Baldwin, 2018). Due to this research, it can be derived that the difference

between individualistic cultures prefer to compare themselves to others in order to better their

individual status and collectivist cultures compare their standing to the group to see where they

stand in the hierarchy of their peers.

The low self-esteem and poor self-image comes when the comparisons do not match

the individual’s expectations or fail to meet the expectations set by others before them. Social

media is not the first culprit of condemning the self-image of the users. Advertising, especially

in magazines, was the first type of media to reach the masses which had adverse effects on the

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psyche of an individual. With unrealistic expectations of how beautiful was defined, or how the

perfect life appeared; an individual’s imperfections became a glaring mistake that needed to be

fixed in order to attain perfection. Today’s society has seen an increase in articles written for

parents to help grasp a better understanding of what children are going through when they visit

social media. Dr. Emanuele has the understanding that, “kids view social media through the

lens of their own lives.” And, that if they are struggling in their own lives, these images seen on

social media will make their lives seem worse than reality. (Jacobson, 2018). Often the most

notable comparison is the “Duck Theory”. This is best described as to how a duck has the

appearance of gliding across the water effortlessly but under the surface their feet are paddling

furiously. There is a growing concern that as a society we have become too dependent on the

use of technology as substitutes for our psychological and physiological needs. Social media,

and all of its platforms, are now evolving into breeding grounds for new cultures and sub-

cultures. The ability to create spaces for cultures to develop meets Maslow’s social belonging of

the hierarchy scale.

Finding groups of people that you belong to will never be easier than it is now. With the

development of social media, people of all cultures are able to find commonalities with others

around the globe. One of the earliest forms of people linking to cultures through social media

was the invention of Napster. Napster allowed for chatrooms that were for specific bands,

songs, and genres. These chatrooms connected people to other people that were interested in

that type of music in which they liked. This trend of creating communities through media

outlets has been continued in today’s pop culture due to it becoming easier to reach a greater

community through social media. Suzanne Scott, an assistant professor who teaches classes in

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fan culture and new and digital media on the media industry, has theorized that networks such

as Twitter have made it easier to, “curate and broadcast” information on platforms designed to

make connections outside of personal circles. (Scott, 2013) We see now that TV shows are

enticing the use of social media to continue discussing the show well after the programing has

ended. This allows people to have extensive dialogue at their own discretion. The idea of fan

culture is a widespread topic to discuss because it can include a large amount of people that

can all identify to many different fandoms. People usually associate fans with the sports

culture, but fans can be enthusiastic admirers of any interest making them parts of different

cultures. Social media has allowed these greater communities to take in many more members

than the people in the immediate distance around them. Active engagement has become easier

due to the ability to reach a greater quantity of people that are part of the culture.

The psychological sense of community is in the perception of similarity of others and

interdependence with others. This begins the idea of local community and fan community.

Local community is the people around an individual that provides a community for intermingled

dialogue while fan community is a group of individuals with a shared dialogue. The results of

Chadborn (2018) “support the general notion that fans feel psychologically connected to their

fan communities regardless of type of fan interest.”. This psychological connection has been

strengthened by the introduction of social media. It has allowed a widespread growth of

outreach for people from many different walks of life to be part of a larger culture, even if they

cannot be in the physical presence of others. Between cultures there have been differences in

the networking done in order to reach a greater audience. The basic definition of internet-

based network is a “social network built around interests, using common threads to bring

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members of an audience together.” (Dayal, 2016). Many differences can be looked at between

varying cultures. For instance, opposite cultures, like the US (individualistic) and China

(collectivist), are creating a globalized online culture while still retaining their cultural

differences. The Americans are more likely to have a more expanded outreach in their networks

while the Chinese have smaller groups of networks; this is not far-fetched due to earlier

research. However, a culture like Germany that is seen as a blend of an individualistic culture

and collectivist culture, has a smaller network but is more diverse than the previously

mentioned cultures. The most interesting research regarding the social networking of countries

is finding that opposite cultures like the US and China are generally more inclined to, “post

more sensitive information online than Europeans.” (Brake, 2017). Social media is helping grow

the human understanding of culture and help it further along so that it can become all-inclusive

to all those who wish to be a part of the community. So, when social media evolved into being

able to sustain sub-cultures within its contents, it took another step forward to becoming a

living creation that evolves to satisfy the needs of humans.

When arguing that social media is becoming a living creation it would be hard to

overlook its ability to influence mood and behavior. This may seem to go against the theory

that social media has the potential to fulfill the needs of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs but it can

be argued that social media now has the ability to change the one of the stages of needs. Social

media has the potential to change the way the self-actualization stage is reached. Social media

can be shown to affect moods and the way an individual looks at the world around them. This

can affect the self-actualization stage because this can directly influence the way one person

believes in the growth of themselves based on the changing world around them. There have

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been studies shown that social media and gender are two correlated variables when it comes to

media. According to Ehrenreich (2016), girls are posting more positive affect in their posts,

while also receiving positive feedback in their posts. This can back up the theory that individuals

have become more likely to have a different self-actualization of themselves when they are to

post something online or not. Women were shown to be less likely to post something with

negative affect of themselves. So in order to put something online, women need greater

internalizing than their male counterparts. Ehrenreich continued to discuss how it has become

easy to predict behavior for females on social media due to the changed ideology of

internalizing symptoms. It has become apparent that negative effect from peers and

community has led to the negative effects of an individual. There is no longer any self-

affirmation as mood has been able to be predicted on social media sites. This is s stark contrast

from the male ideology as they are more likely to attempt to conform to gender norms. Males

are less likely to disclose their personal feelings to their peer groups. These two different

reactions towards positive/negative effects can be attributed to the world view around them.

Males do not receive responses from their peers for being lonely, anxious, or depressed so they

are less likely to disclose these types of feelings to the world. On the other hand, females are

more likely to make this information more public because they are more likely to receive the

response they are looking for. According to Oosten (2015), adolescents are more likely to “use

and produce media content that is in line with their everyday experiences and attitudes

including their gender role orientation.”. This further supports the theory of social media’s

ability to show reciprocal relationships to culture’s ideas of gender norms while demonstrating

the notion of which social media is influencing an individual’s idea of being self-actualized.

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 The discussion of mood can be further discussed how social media creates more issues

than it solves. When the feelings created by social media threaten to disrupt an individual’s

self-actualization process the issue can also be worsened by social media. It has been found

that angered or upset men are more likely to ruminate in their anger, while woman are more

likely to find ways to replace their angry thoughts with more positive ones. Social media allows

for “different adjustment intentions to be pursued with the offered stimuli, and these

intentions are then indicated in the analysis by the observed selective exposure time dedicated

to these stimuli.” (Westerwick, 2006). This can be further explained as to how females look to

better their mood by actively seeking positive media sources to better their moods while the

males look to sustain their mood in anticipation for retaliation. Individuals are starting to look

towards social media in order to tell them how to feel, and they are doing so unknowingly. In a

world where media has been seen as a quick fix to help solve issues, it ends in a vicious cycle of

feeling worse. Alice Walton (2017) speaks on the studies that have shown that users believe

that they will feel better when using social media but have ended up feeling worse afterwards.

This begs the question as to why individuals no longer have the ability to find self-actualization

in the presence of social media. There is growing concern that with the presence of social

media there is no longer the ability to take better care of our own well-being.

With the creation of social media, it is hard to ignore the obvious impact that its

creation is having on society and the wide range of cultures it contains. It has become a living

creation that is fulfilling needs found on Maslow’s hierarchy and influencing the way we live our

lives. Many different cultures are being affected by these developments and it apparent that it

is becoming a global culture when it comes to the domain of social media. Although social

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media has not fulfilled all levels of Maslow’s hierarchy, it fulfills the need of three out of the

five. Providing or degrading self-esteem, providing a sense of belonging to a larger community,

and replacing how individuals can become self-actualized is how social media is creeping its

way into our everyday lives. Social media has aggressively found a way to influence how an

individual thinks of one’s self; allowing a widespread group of people to become a community

in the safety of networking with people with similar interests as you; and influencing an

individual’s mood and emotions. This is starting the notion that social media is becoming a

living creation that is becoming a part of an individual and the greater whole of society.

Effectively it is still to be determined whether these effects of social media are better for the

well-being of an individual. The research may suggest that there are only negative effects but

there are still the positives that social media can provide. It allows for socialization of a

primarily social species without face to face interaction, it allows for greater outreach for

communities, and it allows for the ability to be influenced or influence people of other cultures.

However, social media is like a double-edged sword in that it can help further the socialization

of our cultures or further divide it due to its inhuman qualities.

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 Works Cited

Baldwin, M, & Mussweiler, T. (2018) The culture of social comparison. National Academy of Sciences, 115(39),
E9067-E9074. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1721555115

Brake, T. (2017). Cross-cultural social media usage shows more commonalities than differences. Retrieved from:
https://countrynavigator.com/blog/expert-view/cross-cultural-social-media-commonalities/

Chadborn, D., Edwards, P., & Reysen, S. (2018). Reexamining differences between fandom and local sense of
community. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 7(3), 241-249.
doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.loras.edu/10.1037/ppm0000125

Dayal, S. (2016). Interest-based networks are the way of future. Retrieved from:
https://yourstory.com/2016/11/interest-based-networks-future/

Ehrenreich, S. E., & Underwood, M. K. (2016). Adolescents’ internalizing symptoms as predictors of the content of
their facebook communication and responses received from peers. Translational Issues in Psychological
Science, 2(3), 227-237. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.loras.edu/10.1037/tps0000077

Jacobson, R. (2018). Social media and Self-doubt. Child Mind Institute. Retrieved from:
https://childmind.org/article/social-media-and-self-doubt/

Knobloch-Westerwick, S., & Alter, S. (2006). Mood Adjustment to Social Situations Through Mass Media Use: How
Men Ruminate and Women Dissipate Angry Moods. Human Communication Research, 32(1), 58–73.
https://doi-org.ezproxy.loras.edu/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2006.00003.x

Oosten, J, Vandenbosch, L, & Peter, J (2017) Gender roles on social networking sites: investigating reciprocal
relationships between Dutch adolescents’ hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity and sexy online self-

presentations, Journal of Children and Media, 11:2, 147-166, DOI: 10.1080/17482798.2017.1304970

Scott, S. (2013). Is social media creating a digitally dependent culture? ASU Now. Retrieved from:
https://asunow.asu.edu/content/social-media-creating-digitally-dependent-culture

Vogel, E. A., Rose, J. P., Roberts, L. R., & Eckles, K. (2014). Social comparison, social media, and self-esteem.
Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 3(4), 206-222.
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Walton, A. (2017). 6 ways Social media affects our mental health. Retrieved from:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2017/06/30/a-run-down-of-social-medias-effects-on-our-
mental-health/#5b4ad4ea2e5a

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