The more we use and participate in social media, the greater the effects social media will have on each and every one of us. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and all other networks we use on an ongoing basis have massively altered and profoundly changed our behaviour. We see the world differently. We see everyone else differently. We see ourselves differently. And there really is no going back to how it once was.
The fact of the matter is social media has not only changed life, it has forever recalculated it to the vastness of all probability. The table of elements for human life has been greatly expanded. The laws that govern our very existence have been further compounded. Our continuing refinements to social profile perfection, our hardly random status updates, our strolls through the proverbial news feed landscape all account for an extreme level of behavioural adjustment. Behaviours that are more powerful that we can begin to truly realize.
Like anything else, social media is naturally inserting and creating a series of laws that define and govern its own existence. Unknowingly but fascinatingly, we are all the catalysts to these growing dynamics as we feed off social media and social media feeds off us. And through this self-perpetuating cycle we reinforce both one and the other. Here are 3 laws the govern social media.
1. The Law of Numbers
Social media is unquestionably biased towards the power of numbers. Equally, we are naturally drawn to them. The greater the number, the greater the impact, the greater the influence, the greater the significant, the greater the effect. We are inclined and attracted and deceived by the power that lies in the association of larger digits to a particular item.
Articles that are tweeted more reciprocate in a larger amount of tweets. Facebook pages that are “liked” more generate a larger amount of “likes”. Greater social media activity generates greater social influence. None of which are the result of true substance but rather caused by the support of the law of numbers.
An article that is tweeted 300 times will generate more interest and activity and broadcast than one tweeted 30 times. Not because of its natural impact and characteristics of 300 tweets but due to the fact the “300” will receive one level of behaviour and the “30” will receive a lesser level of behavioural response. Even if the latter article was superior in content to the first. Ultimately, this applies to all contexts of social media that are concerned with numbers.
2. The Law of Misperception
Social media not only creates a misperception of who we are, it creates a misperception of the world we see and observe. Our social profiles are hardly true representations of who we are. The social profiles of our friends, followers and connections are hardly true representations of who they are. In both the case of the former and latter, we all pursue a social existence that will place us in the best, coolest, positive, most beneficial light we can conceive and believe.
The law of misperception causes use to create our social existence not in the eyes of who we are but in the eyes of others that will be viewing who we are. Equally, the law of misperceptions glorifies those around us. We’ve always been envious and competitive and jealous of each other in one extent or another and as a result we believe that others actually had that great of a time, while we didn’t. And they live such an awesome life, and we don’t. And they’re so happy together, and we’re not.
We falsely, incorrectly, and misgivingly apply unsupported value to all contexts, stories, images, relationships, descriptions and status-updates. We deceive ourselves into a false reality. We hope to instil perfection in our social selves by chasing the misperceived perfection of others. And continually pushing cycle the more we become inclusionary to social media.
3.The Law of Emotion
In hopes of not losing our human touch in the vastness of advancing social media and technology, we act at a heightened level of emotional polarity. We seemingly appear to be on the positive and negative extremes of the scale. And even then, our actions are meant to evoke a response. From the uttermost politeness we all share in front of the masses to our know-it-all opinions that further invigorate the mob, our care towards the online world can hardly be said to be represented in real life.
We growingly care about people, and things, and elements of social media life that were previously never of any consequence to our lives. We elicit behaviours that consume us. We don’t have 350 supposed “friends” because we actually care to be friends with them. Rather we are concerned with everything else that represents them. We all openly evoke online conversation but the majority of us can say we ever did the same before or even do now outside the confines of social media.
We stalk and creep profiles. We keep tabs an people we haven’t seen or talked to in years. We are polite not for the sake of simply being polite but to build rapport and establish an even greater personal network. Our social profiles are updated by emotional extremes. It’s not the update that generates a response but the extremity of it. There is no place for the neutral level of daily emotion that in fact encompasses the majority of our daily lives.
Laws of Social Media
These laws are hardly immutable. Nor are they single-handedly the only ones that govern social media. However, their impacts have to truly be understood. The culmination to the mounting value of numbers has generated a series of attributes that control Google search and your Facebook news feed. Both of which are not controlled by what you want to see but by what has a heavier social presence and a perceived disposition of what the numbers say about you.
The numbers create a misperception of what you see and ultimately create a misperception of what is important to us. As certain elements generate greater social presence or social authority or social capital, they create a falsehood of truthfulness. A truth that ultimately produces emotions that would otherwise not come to fruition.
Many of you will be affected by the words of this article by these laws. And so the cycle continues. Many of you will see the words here as presenting social media as a negative occurrence. But it shouldn’t be understood this way. Rather these laws are representation of what has social media is. Just like gravity dictates that what goes up must come down, the law of numbers, misperceptions and emotions dictate the essence of social media.
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