The psychology behind social media influencers

Good evening everyone, and happy Friday! I hope you've all had a good week doing whatever you've been up to.

As for me over here, I've been busy for the first 3 days with my extra credit, then I had 2 days of doing nothing. As of right now, I thought about doing another blog post, since I currently have nothing else more important to do. 

As the title states, I will be explaining the psychology of what makes people think they are social media influencers. I was actually doing my research on this whilst on my lunchbreak on Wednesday. 

What is a social media influencer?

A social media influencer is a type of person who likes to make themselves look, as well as be popular across every social media existing. They do this by constantly posting what they like doing, with the sole intention of attracting followers, and people liking their posts. 

What makes social media influencers popular in today's society? 

Social media influencers are becoming increasingly popular by the second of every day due to the amount of money they are making just by posting on their social media. This can also be done due to the fact that it's easy to become addicted to social media. On the subject of social media addiction being easy to get into, a lot of people use it to create their own businesses on it to earn money. If we even look at the term 'influencer' this is where social media influencers encourage other social media influencers to get involved in the world of social media influencing by purposely making posts that will make their followers think: "Wow! They look really cool doing that!"

Why do people behave like a social media influencer?

This is because they follow a lot of already social media users all over social media, and they feel like they want to be like them by mimicking their influential behaviour on their social media. Doing so also helps these people, who are under the influence of social media influencers, to feel like they are being social with every single person they are connected with on social media. This would be known as the now typical social interaction. *If anyone reading this is old-skool in terms of this topic, I suggest you take your allergy tablets*

Conclusion: I think we can all agree that social media influencing will STILL continue to get competitively popular in general as time will go on. Moreover on this, social media will still be an effective tool to use when it comes to promoting, marketing or campaigning, which will encourage influential behaviour to their followers. At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong use when it comes to social media influencers, as they can make post their own content on literally anything at all to attract their social media audience. I personally am not into social media influencing, so I do not want to showcase my opinions on here, as it could cause controversy. Link to my research source: https://www.bcu.ac.uk/media/news/blog/are-social-media-influencers-really-that-significant

Anyway, hope you've all found this topic post beneficial by gaining a useful insight into what social media influencers are all about, and I shall be back very soon.

*I began this post on the 20/10/23, but didn't get finished until the 21/10/23* 

2 ways to become everyone's favourite person

Evening everyone! I hope you've all had a good week doing whatever you're all doing.

This morning, I decided to have a scrolling session on Psychology Today to see any recent articles that had caught my eye. And as the above title states, this was the most interesting one I had come across, so I thought about distributing what I had read onto here for you guys to see for yourselves as well.

As of at this time of day, I'm too tired to be making this into a long post by using my own words, so I'll write out my overview & attach my source at the end. This is also because this article is too accurate for me to write out by using my own words. Or in other words, I cannot word what I had read in this article differently.

Overview: This article will go into detail about the behaviours of people who have an intention to be everybody's favourite person. In terms of detail, the article will discuss the characteristics of how an individual will be like towards other people, in a bid to make other people like the individual.

Source link: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/social-instincts/202305/2-ways-to-become-everyones-favorite-person

The psychology of addictive smartphone behaviour

Yes, welcome back to yet another small, but insightful research project of mine! I say small, as this is something which I've only been doing research on for a short period of time. I did ensure to scroll down slowly though, so I could take in every single word of what I was reading to help my head process everything.

What I've chosen to publish for this post, is an inspiration from a picture I had come across on one of my psychology groups on Facebook, and I said to myself that I'll get round to making a post on my blogging website about it at some point. I thought this today would be my ideal time for me to do it! Although I had the picture, I needed to find a piece of research that would link well with the picture. I had typed in "psychology & smartphones" in the Google search bar, which took me to this article that came up 1st in the results page: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.573473/full Here's my evaluation:

*This was the picture I had come across on one of my psychology groups on Facebook*

Overview: It is without any doubt that people like to spend their boredom time on their smartphones. I for 1, can even happily hold my hands up to this as well. We like to use our smartphones for the purpose of connecting with other people around us. That being said, most of our modern social life in this day & age revolves around communicating/connecting with people on social media. While social media can be a good purpose for connecting with other people, it can also become too addictive by constantly having to feel the need to check it all of the time. If you're curious to know more about this, see: The psychology behind social media It's not just social media that can cause smartphone addiction though, using a smartphone to continuously replace basic tasks can even put an enormous strain on our mental health. (Mine included) When I say basic tasks, I'm referring to checking the time, checking emails & doing work on it. It would be definitely safe to say that smartphones are taking over mental health, and that is not good at all.

Evidence: On the subject of communicating to one another, a smartphone may seem like a perfect use to do so, as you could have friends who could be going through a difficult time, and they would love somebody to communicate to them. Unfortunately, they could be too far away to communicate to a friend in person, which is why smartphones can provide the most affective use to communicate with people, regardless of whereabouts they are in the world. Highlighting social media for a few seconds, it can be a good way for anybody looking into the creative industry by creating their own content. Moreover, creating popular content on social media can help you to earn money.

Now for the downsides. It has been proven that teenagers' mental health have typically been effected the most by smartphone addiction, as they feel the need to crave their use of social media for the benefit of socially connecting with others. This can also include craving to seek support from their social media followers in a bid to make them feel valued. Although a smartphone my not seem like much to begin with, but the more that people, especially teenagers, mindlessly play about on their smartphone, the more they are at risk from dysfunctional systems. This is just something else besides poor mental health. 

If excessive smartphone use eventually gets to the point of becoming too addictive, then it causes aggressive behaviour to come out of oneself due to their addictive use of a smartphone interfering with their life in general. Endless use of a smartphone could very well be easily done if repeating its excessive use too often. Doing so can make your mind go numb by not even thinking about doing it. This is where the depression comes into play, as your mind will get bored of doing the same thing every time, but feel like there is no escaping the addiction at the same time.

Conclusion: All smartphone addictions have a different story to tell. Meaning, they are not all the same. In theory, it really all depends on what way people behave addictively on their smartphones. Regardless of what smartphone addictive behaviour, they can all have poor mindset consequences at the end.

Inside the mind of a sociologist (Perspective post)

First things first, I'm so glad to have the time to be back at what I'm doing again! Realistically, this has been my first day of R&R since the 5th of June.

As I've now become hooked onto how sociology works, I thought about sharing an insight as to how a sociologist visions the world through their inquisitive eyes... (Or you could say my eyes!)

A sociologist will happen to be in a place full of people who tend to hang out in their own groups. Within those groups, the sociologist takes it upon themselves to interestingly identify how these groups tend to behave in the way that they do, in a bid to create social attraction.

This is where the sociologist does their detective work, as they figure out what makes those groups influence other people to join in with them. But the sociologist is foremost fascinated by the way these people in their groups already endure their influential behaviour, as the sociologist can easily work out that it must be to do with how they socialize in their family that makes them influential in the way that they are today.  

Of course, this will only spur the sociologist to look into these people's social medias to find the link which causes online social interaction between one another or a group of people. This is where the sociologist discovers that their way of thinking is infinite, as they figure out that there are a never-ending amount of answers in relations to investigating social behaviour/interaction.