The Psychology of Social Media by Ciarán Mc Mahon

Stars: ***

Routledge (2019)
Psychology/Social Media
106 pages

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This post contains affiliate links.

Summary:

Are we really being ourselves on social media? Can we benefit from connecting with people we barely know online? Why do some people overshare on social networking sites?

The Psychology of Social Media explores how so much of our everyday lives is played out online, and how this can impact our identity, wellbeing and relationships. It looks at how our online profiles, connections, status updates and sharing of photographs can be a way to express ourselves and form connections, but also highlights the pitfalls of social media including privacy issues.

From FOMO to fraping, and from subtweeting to selfies, The Psychology of Social Media shows how social media has developed a whole new world of communication, and for better or worse is likely to continue to be an essential part of how we understand our selves.

The Psychology of Social Media

I haven’t been using Social Media as obsessively as I was a year or two ago because I’ve been blogging less but I’m well versed in the different social media platforms and I’ve seen how they’ve changed over the years since social media began. Oh yes, I remember BEFORE social media!

As such, this book was interesting but short. I had heard about some of it already but I did learn new things, especially with regards to how people use social media and the ways in which social media can cause problems.

A chapter each is dedicated to the following topics: profiles, connections, updates, media, messaging and values. The most eye opening part I think was learning the basics of how Facebook and other social media services use what we do on social media to affect what advertising we are shown. I knew they did this but didn’t know how much could be told about who I am as a person based on what I do or share.

This book is part of a series called The Psychology of Everything and includes books such as The Psychology of: Trust, Grief, Working Life, Addiction, Climate Change, Vampires, Retirement and Happiness. I’d personally really like to read The Psychology of Dog Ownership.

If you want to learn a bit more about the book, read what the author wrote about writing the book.

Buy The Psychology of Social Media at Amazon.com and help support the blog.

See Psychology of Social Media at GoodReads.