Facebook

Social networking can be defined as "websites that function as online communities of users" (Baran, 2017, pg. 187). Facebook brings people together because they can keep up with their own personal lives and still be involved with their friends' and families' lives at the same time. It is easy to get ahold of anyone through Facebook, whether it is through a message or commenting on a post. For example, have you ever had a family member or friend who lives far away reach out to you on Facebook because they saw one of your posts? I know this has happened to me several times. Facebook allows for people further away to be in touch and stay up to date with current life situations. Social networking has just become an everyday occurrence for a lot of people. Some may call them digital natives, or "people who have never known a world without the Internet" (Baran, 2017, pg. 190). Not only is Facebook popular for people and their personal lives, but it is also becoming relevant for people and their jobs. There are many business profiles and people who create profiles to promote themselves with their careers or businesses. The article states, "Across the board, social sites are a way for people to interact as they never could before (or at least, never could with such ease). For journalists that means contacting others for ideas and support on tough assignments or connecting with editors for advice and job opportunities" (Wilson, 2008). When it comes to social networking, Facebook has shown to be a constant use of resource for connecting with people whether it is friends, family, coworkers, or even strangers. 

Being on social media can have negative impacts on people's moods when they are done using them. This would be considered an affective forecasting error, which can be defined as "the discrepancy between the expected and actual emotions generated by Facebook activity - produces a decline in users' mood after using the social networking site (2014, p. 361)" (Baran, 2017, pg. 189). It could go both ways, the person could be happy or become sad after closing out the social media apps. Spending so much time scrolling through Facebook can become a lot for one person to take in, resulting in their mood shifting. This newspaper article states, "The most striking result from the study may be that deactivating Facebook had a positive but small effect on people's moods and life satisfaction. The finding tempers the widely held presumption that habitual social-media use causes psychological distress" (Carey, 2019). Therefore, taking a break from Facebook it allowed users to be in better moods and overall feel better about their lives. In our society, we are constantly comparing ourselves to others and wishing things were different. That is all because of what social media is presenting to us. In this TedTalk, Bailey Parnell says, "In social media, these likes, the comments, the shares, they become this form of social currency by which we attribute value to something" (Parnell, 2017). Since we find ourselves constantly in this realm of social media, it is important to take a break every so often just to give our mental health a break. The affective forecasting error has definitely had an impact within our society today since we sit on our phones and scroll through Facebook which then deciphers what our mood will end up being. Overall, Facebook can bring about different feelings depending on what we see while we are scrolling and it is important to know when to give ourselves a break.