What Type of Social Media User Are You?steemCreated with Sketch.

in #psychology7 years ago

Why do so many people use Facebook, or other social media? Are there certain general types of people that everyone seems to fall into? It seems so. Maybe not very specifically but sort of like how a personality test can generalize a dominant type yet we still have qualities of other types as well.


Credit: Nate Edwards
/BYU Photo

Three researchers from Brigham Young University wanted to know why there are 2 billion unique users in a month, and 1.28 billion each day, averaging over 30 minutes of Facebook use each day for each person. Something draws people to use Facebook or other social media sites.

They came up with 4 categories of users -- and their motivations:

  • selfies
  • relationship builders
  • window shoppers
  • town criers

To get those general types, a list of 48 reasons for why people might be on Facebook was presented to people, which they ranked as most-like or least-like themselves.


Selfies

Selfies self-promote. They post pictures, videos and text updates. They focus on getting attention in the form of likes and comments about their personal life and the image they present of themselves. The statement most identified by these types of people was: "The more 'like' notification alarms I receive, the more I feel approved by my peers."


Relationship Builders

Relationship builders do just that. They post and respond to other posts, and contact people through other features like messaging. The virtual world acts as an extension of their attempt to establish relationships. They identified the most with the phrase: "Facebook helps me to express love to my family and lets my family express love to me."


Window Shoppers

Window shoppers don't really post much personal information. They might be there for social obligations like seeing what's going on in society or other people's lives. They watch. They identify the most with the statement: "I can freely look at the Facebook profile of someone I have a crush on and know their interests and relationship status."


Town Criers

Town criers post, and have a social obligation of their own. They less not concerned with sharing personal photos or stories about themselves, and more so with informing people about news stories or other information or events.


The types relate to Facebook, but I have extended them to apply to all social media as a motivational reason for why we are on Steemit, Facebook, Twitter, or other sites.

These categories are smaller than regular personality tests, but I think they are generally accurate to cover most of the reasons people are on social media. I also find that these categories show the motivations and drives for why we use social media platforms, whereas regular personality types don't really indicate such. A better categorization framework could probably be made, but this is an interesting quaternal model. What do you think?

So, why do you use social media? Were you previously aware of why you did? Are you only one type, or mostly one type?


Thank you for your time and attention! Take care. Peace.

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I think we need to get some of those personalities over on the steemit platform....I think a lot more people will become engaged and not be "window shoppers" if they use steemit. It will help some people crawl out of their shell.

Good post, you have a nice post in here

This comment has received a 0.14 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @hamzaoui.

I'm a window shopper on facebook....but on Steemit, I'm attempting to be a relationship builder. Steemit almost forces that behavior, which is great.

Well that's interesting that Steemit is making you change ;)

Im also a window shopper on other social media outlets. Its difficult trying to step up to a relationship builder after window shopping for so long. Lets see how we go!

I'm going to be investing alot more time an energy interacting with steemit.
It's just infinitely more rewarding than facebook, instagram or anything else for that matter and the positivity and truly valuable and enriching content is such a breath of fresh air. I only wish I would have realized the opportunity sooner! Thanks for everything you post krnel!

You're welcome, good luck!

I slip into different modes. Twitter im a town cryer, facebook a bit of a window shopper and steemit is a bit of a mix really.linked in is a bit of a town cryer but its my least favourite social media! I think therecould be other categories but im not sure what at present :-)

Hehe, a mix and varied behavior on different platforms, good to know, thanks for sharing.

I don't believe Steemit offers a way of personal messaging yet....or I must have completely missed that. I use Facebook to network, to build relationships worldwide....I don't need it to interact with my family though, so not quite fitting into one specific category. Then again, that is nothing new haha :)

Instant messaging is a useful feature on a social media for interconnectivity, I agree.

You try steemit . chat for now

I try to be a relationship builder though I'm actually one of those people that doesn't really have Facebook, Twitter or any other real social media accounts. I'm active on a bunch of forums over very specific niches and I recently got on steemit which is the first all purpose social network I actually become a regular user of.

But I don't think I see my real social media type - pretentious argumentative douche, where's that?

LOL!

I never used Twitter or the others. Facebook for info sharing.

Window shopper on Facebook which I use once in a few months to a year. On steemit, I'm hoping to change that into a relationship builder. Might take a lot more practice and effort but hopefully, I can keep at it and make a transition.

Sweet, cheers, here's wishing you good luck in your effort :)

I use facebook for messanger only. But yeah, some people just love getting all those likes, I guess that makes them feel better about themselves... But it kinda ruins them as a person overall.

While I've definitely seen examples of all of these types, I'd categorize myself as about 8% relationship builder and 6% window shopper.

I don't relate to either the selfie poster or the town crier.

The remaining 90% probably just falls under "other".

Yes, I am 104% of the average user.

Well, I guess these things need a lot more work then ;) Thanks for the feedback Mr. 104%

Oh, there's no need to change because of a statistical outlier such as myself.

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