You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud or an evolutionary biologist to figure out that there is something about Facebook that resonates deeply in our psyches and in our lizard brains. New research is attempting to identify and document how this works.
The fact that people accumulate friends and family members and then post and watch countless still images and videos feels very primal and tribal. We are exercising the passive aspect of our flight or fight instincts as we build our social networks. Recent survey data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project suggests that individuals extend their introvert or extrovert tendencies and play out predictable gender roles in social media.
Twenty to thirty percent of Facebook users are “power users”. Like those people who call into talk radio shows, these individuals create the most content, post more frequently, like more aggressively and comment on or tag others pictures and posts often. Yet only 5% of the Facebook user base, do all of these things. For the majority Facebook is a more passive experience where they get more than they give.
The Pew folks found that …
63% got a friend request but only 40% made one
The average person hit “Like”14 times/month... Read more
