article writing on social networking sites

Writing for Social Media in 2024: Tips and Tools

Writing for social media takes talent, creativity, focus, and a deep understanding of your audience. Here are a few tips to help you get started.

Writing for social media: 7 tips for 2024

Writing for social media is not an easy job. 

You work with strict character limits and tight turnarounds. You speak the language of memes and microtrends that your boss and coworkers might not understand. You have to quickly — and wittily — react to trending topics. And, if you ever publish a post with a typo, people will notice and call you out. (Looking at you, Twitter meanies.)

But it’s also fun and rewarding. Great content can help you start inspiring conversations, build engaged communities, create buzz around your brand, and even directly influence sales.

Keep reading for expert tips and tools that will help you become a more confident and effective social media writer in no time .

OwlyWriter AI instantly generates captions and content ideas for every social media network. It’s seriously easy.

What is social media content writing?

Social media content writing is the process of writing content for social media audiences, usually across multiple major social media platforms . It can include writing short captions for TikTok or Instagram Reels, long-form LinkedIn articles, and everything in between. 

Writing for social media is different from writing for blogs and websites — it requires expert knowledge of social platforms and their audiences, trends, and inside jokes. 

Social media writing is a crucial element of any brand’s social presence. It can make or break a campaign or your entire social media marketing strategy. When done right, social writing directly influences engagement and conversions, and contributes to strategic business goals.

7 social media writing tips for 2024

The tips below will help you create content that will inspire your target audience to interact with you, take action, or simply spend a few seconds contemplating what they just read. 

Try some (or all) of these in your next 10 social media posts to build good habits and strengthen your writing muscle. You’ll be amazed at how clear you’ll write, and how you’ll zero in on your voice.

Bonus: Download The Wheel of Copy , a free visual guide to crafting persuasive headlines, emails, ads and calls to action . Save time and write copy that sells!

1. Just start writing (you’ll edit later)

Writer’s block is real, but there’s an easy way to blast past it: Just start writing without overthinking it. 

Start typing whatever comes to mind and forget about sentence structure, spelling, and punctuation (for a moment). Just keep your fingers moving and power through any blockages. Editing will come later. 

This is how John Swartzwelder, legendary Simpsons writer, wrote scripts for the show : 

“Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue […]. Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but it’s a script. The hard part is done. It’s like a crappy little elf has snuck into my office and badly done all my work for me, and then left with a tip of his crappy hat. All I have to do from that point on is fix it.”

2. Speak the language of social media

This, of course, means different things on different platforms.

Eileen Kwok, Social Marketing Coordinator at Hootsuite thinks it’s absolutely crucial to “have a good understanding of what language speaks to your target audience. Every channel serves a different purpose, so the copy needs to vary.”

Wondering what that looks like, exactly, on Hootsuite’s own social media channels? “LinkedIn, for example, is a space for working professionals, so we prioritize educational and thought leadership content on the platform. Our audience on TikTok is more casual, so we give them videos that speak to the fun and authentic side of our brand.”

But this advice goes beyond picking the right content categories and post types for each network. It really comes down to the language you use. 

Eileen says: “On most channels, you’ll want to spell-check everything and make sure you’re grammatically correct — but those rules don’t apply for TikTok. Having words in all caps for dramatic effect, using emojis instead of words, and even the misspelling of words all serves the playful nature of the app.”

You can go ahead and show this to your boss the next time they don’t want to approve a TikTok caption mentioning Dula Peep or using absolutely no punctuation.

3. Make your posts accessible 

As a social media writer, you should make sure that everyone in your audience can enjoy your posts.

Nick Martin, Social Listening and Engagement Strategist at Hootsuite told me: “When writing for social media, accessibility is something you should be keeping in mind. Some of your followers may use screen-readers, and a post that is full of emojis would be nearly unreadable for them.”

Unintelligible posts won’t help you reach your social media goals. In fact, they might turn people away from your brand altogether. 

“The same goes for when you share an image that has text on it,” Nick adds. “You’ll want to make sure you write alt-text for that image so all of your audience can enjoy it.” 

Here’s a great example of how you can have fun writing creative and entertaining alt-text for your social post’s accompanying images:

Self-care routines and bear encounters both start with setting boundaries pic.twitter.com/reul7uausI — Washington State Dept. of Natural Resources (@waDNR) September 20, 2022

4. Keep it simple

Imagine you’re writing to an 8th grader. Like, actually .

This is a simple but super effective exercise that will force you to write clearly and ditch any unnecessary jargon that would likely only confuse your readers.

“Drive innovation.”

“Become a disruptor.”

LinkedIn, in particular, is home to some of the most over-used, under-effective statements of all time. And sure, it’s a “businessy” social media channel. But business people are, well, people too. And people respond well to succinct, clear copy — not overused buzzwords with little to no real meaning behind them.

To connect with your audience, you have to speak a language they understand. Say something real. Use plain language and short sentences. Practice on your niece, mom, or friend, and see if they get your message.

5. Write to the reader

Your social media audience isn’t dying to find out what your company is up to or what’s important to you (unless it’s super relevant). They want to know what’s in it for them. That’s why you should always write from the readers’ perspective. Make them the hero.

So, instead of posting a boring list of features that have just been added to your product, tell your audience how their life will improve if they use it.

Sometimes, “standing out” is nothing more than writing from the reader’s point of view — because most of your competitors don’t.

6. Have a clear purpose

… and write that purpose down at the top of your draft to keep your mind on the target while you write.

What action do you want the reader to take? Do you want them to leave a comment or click through to your website? Whatever it is, make it clear in a CTA (call to action). 

Note that a CTA doesn’t have to be a button or any other super explicit, easily identifiable element within your post. It can be as simple as an engaging question within your caption, or a sentence telling your audience why they should click on the link in your bio. 

7. Use (the right) pictures to enhance your words

This one speaks for itself. (One image is worth a thousand words, anyone?)

We’ve already talked about the importance of adding alt-text to images for accessibility, but the images you pick are very important. 

Some networks rely on words more than they do on images and videos. But whenever possible (and relevant), you should try to include visuals in your posts — they’re much more effective at grabbing the attention of scrollers than words. And without that attention, your words won’t get a chance to shine. 

Everything you need to make engaging content. AI support for captions, an AI hashtag generator, and access to Canva in Hootsuite.

3 writing tools for social media

1. hootsuite’s owlywriter ai.

Good for: Generating social media posts and ideas, repurposing web content, and filling up your social media calendar faster.

Cost: Included in Hootsuite Pro plans and higher 

Did you know that Hootsuite comes with OwlyWriter AI, a built-in creative AI tool that saves social media pros hours of work?

You can use OwlyWriter to:

• Write a new social media caption in a specific tone, based on a prompt
• Write a post based on a link (e.g. a blog post or a product page)
• Generate post ideas based on a keyword or topic (and then write posts expanding on the idea you like best)
• Identify and repurpose your top-performing posts
• Create relevant captions for upcoming holidays

To get started with OwlyWriter, sign in to your Hootsuite account and head to the Inspiration section of the dashboard. Then, pick the type of AI magic you want to see in action.

For example, if you’re not sure what to post, click on Get inspired . Then, type in the general, high-level topic you want to address and click Get ideas .

Start your free 30-day trial

OwlyWriter will generate a list of post ideas related to the topic: 

Click on the one you like best to move to the next step — captions and hashtags.

Pick the caption you like and click Create post . The caption will open in Hootsuite Composer, where you can make edits, add media files and links, check the copy against your compliance guidelines — and schedule your post to go live later.

And that’s it! OwlyWriter never runs out of ideas, so you can repeat this process until your social media calendar is full — and sit back to watch your engagement grow.

2. Hemingway app

Good for: Writing anything succinctly and clearly.

Cost: Free in your browser, one-time $19.99 payment for the desktop app.

The Hemingway app will make you a better, more engaging writer. It flags over-complicated words and phrases, long sentences, unnecessary adverbs, passive voice, and so much more. It also gives you a readability score. 

Pro tip: On the Hootsuite editorial team, we always aim for grade 6 readability. Some topics are simply a bit complicated, so stay flexible and don’t beat yourself up if you’re not always able to reach this benchmark — but it’s a good score to shoot for.

Here’s how it works:

• Write your copy.
• Paste it into Hemingway’s online editor .
• Visually see what works and what doesn’t.
• Make your changes.
• Watch your score improve!

Good for: Distraction-free writing.

Cost: Free.

There’s plenty of clutter in life. ZenPen is one small corner of the distraction-free-universe to help you write without outside interference.

• Go to zenpen.io .
• Start writing posts for social.
• Enjoy the noise-free editor until you’re done.

Compose, schedule, and publish your expertly written posts to all the major social media channels from one dashboard using Hootsuite. Try it free today.

Get Started

Save time and grow faster with OwlyWriter AI, the tool that instantly generates social media captions and content ideas .

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Karolina Mikolajczyk is a Senior Inbound Marketing Strategist and associate editor of the Hootsuite blog. After completing her Master’s degree in English, Karolina launched her marketing career in 2014. Before joining Hootsuite in 2021, she worked with digital marketing agencies, SaaS startups, and international corporations, helping businesses and social media content creators grow their online presence and improve conversions through SEO and content marketing strategies.

Nick has over ten years of social media marketing experience, working with brands large and small alike. If you've had a conversation with Hootsuite on social media over the past six years, there's a good chance you've been talking to Nick. His social listening and data analysis projects have been used in major publications such as Forbes, Adweek, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. His work even accurately predicted the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election. When Nick isn't engaging online on behalf of the brand or running his social listening projects, he helps coach teams across the organization in the art of social selling and personal branding. Follow Nick on Twitter at @AtNickMartin.

Eileen is a skilled social media strategist and multi-faceted content creator, with over 4+ years of experience in the marketing space. She helps brands find their unique voice online and turn their stories into powerful content.

She currently works as a social marketer at Hootsuite where she builds social media campaign strategies, does influencer outreach, identifies upcoming trends, and creates viral-worthy content.

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Article Contents

Introduction, social network sites: a definition, a history of social network sites, previous scholarship, overview of this special theme section, future research, acknowledgment, about the authors.

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Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship

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danah m. boyd, Nicole B. Ellison, Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication , Volume 13, Issue 1, 1 October 2007, Pages 210–230, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x

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Social network sites (SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and industry researchers intrigued by their affordances and reach. This special theme section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings together scholarship on these emergent phenomena. In this introductory article, we describe features of SNSs and propose a comprehensive definition. We then present one perspective on the history of such sites, discussing key changes and developments. After briefly summarizing existing scholarship concerning SNSs, we discuss the articles in this special section and conclude with considerations for future research.

Since their introduction, social network sites (SNSs) such as MySpace, Facebook, Cyworld, and Bebo have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices. As of this writing, there are hundreds of SNSs, with various technological affordances, supporting a wide range of interests and practices. While their key technological features are fairly consistent, the cultures that emerge around SNSs are varied. Most sites support the maintenance of pre-existing social networks, but others help strangers connect based on shared interests, political views, or activities. Some sites cater to diverse audiences, while others attract people based on common language or shared racial, sexual, religious, or nationality-based identities. Sites also vary in the extent to which they incorporate new information and communication tools, such as mobile connectivity, blogging, and photo/video-sharing.

Scholars from disparate fields have examined SNSs in order to understand the practices, implications, culture, and meaning of the sites, as well as users’ engagement with them. This special theme section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings together a unique collection of articles that analyze a wide spectrum of social network sites using various methodological techniques, theoretical traditions, and analytic approaches. By collecting these articles in this issue, our goal is to showcase some of the interdisciplinary scholarship around these sites.

The purpose of this introduction is to provide a conceptual, historical, and scholarly context for the articles in this collection. We begin by defining what constitutes a social network site and then present one perspective on the historical development of SNSs, drawing from personal interviews and public accounts of sites and their changes over time. Following this, we review recent scholarship on SNSs and attempt to contextualize and highlight key works. We conclude with a description of the articles included in this special section and suggestions for future research.

We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.

While we use the term “social network site” to describe this phenomenon, the term “social networking sites” also appears in public discourse, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. We chose not to employ the term “networking” for two reasons: emphasis and scope. “Networking” emphasizes relationship initiation, often between strangers. While networking is possible on these sites, it is not the primary practice on many of them, nor is it what differentiates them from other forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC).

What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks. This can result in connections between individuals that would not otherwise be made, but that is often not the goal, and these meetings are frequently between “latent ties” ( Haythornthwaite, 2005 ) who share some offline connection. On many of the large SNSs, participants are not necessarily “networking” or looking to meet new people; instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network. To emphasize this articulated social network as a critical organizing feature of these sites, we label them “social network sites.”

While SNSs have implemented a wide variety of technical features, their backbone consists of visible profiles that display an articulated list of Friends 1 who are also users of the system. Profiles are unique pages where one can “type oneself into being” ( Sundén, 2003 , p. 3). After joining an SNS, an individual is asked to fill out forms containing a series of questions. The profile is generated using the answers to these questions, which typically include descriptors such as age, location, interests, and an “about me” section. Most sites also encourage users to upload a profile photo. Some sites allow users to enhance their profiles by adding multimedia content or modifying their profile’s look and feel. Others, such as Facebook, allow users to add modules (“Applications”) that enhance their profile.

The visibility of a profile varies by site and according to user discretion. By default, profiles on Friendster and Tribe.net are crawled by search engines, making them visible to anyone, regardless of whether or not the viewer has an account. Alternatively, LinkedIn controls what a viewer may see based on whether she or he has a paid account. Sites like MySpace allow users to choose whether they want their profile to be public or “Friends only.” Facebook takes a different approach—by default, users who are part of the same “network” can view each other’s profiles, unless a profile owner has decided to deny permission to those in their network. Structural variations around visibility and access are one of the primary ways that SNSs differentiate themselves from each other.

Timeline of the launch dates of many major SNSs and dates when community sites re-launched with SNS features

After joining a social network site, users are prompted to identify others in the system with whom they have a relationship. The label for these relationships differs depending on the site—popular terms include “Friends,” “Contacts,” and “Fans.” Most SNSs require bi-directional confirmation for Friendship, but some do not. These one-directional ties are sometimes labeled as “Fans” or “Followers,” but many sites call these Friends as well. The term “Friends” can be misleading, because the connection does not necessarily mean friendship in the everyday vernacular sense, and the reasons people connect are varied ( boyd, 2006a ).

The public display of connections is a crucial component of SNSs. The Friends list contains links to each Friend’s profile, enabling viewers to traverse the network graph by clicking through the Friends lists. On most sites, the list of Friends is visible to anyone who is permitted to view the profile, although there are exceptions. For instance, some MySpace users have hacked their profiles to hide the Friends display, and LinkedIn allows users to opt out of displaying their network.

Most SNSs also provide a mechanism for users to leave messages on their Friends’ profiles. This feature typically involves leaving “comments,” although sites employ various labels for this feature. In addition, SNSs often have a private messaging feature similar to webmail. While both private messages and comments are popular on most of the major SNSs, they are not universally available.

Not all social network sites began as such. QQ started as a Chinese instant messaging service, LunarStorm as a community site, Cyworld as a Korean discussion forum tool, and Skyrock (formerly Skyblog) was a French blogging service before adding SNS features. Classmates.com , a directory of school affiliates launched in 1995, began supporting articulated lists of Friends after SNSs became popular. AsianAvenue, MiGente, and BlackPlanet were early popular ethnic community sites with limited Friends functionality before re-launching in 2005–2006 with SNS features and structure.

Beyond profiles, Friends, comments, and private messaging, SNSs vary greatly in their features and user base. Some have photo-sharing or video-sharing capabilities; others have built-in blogging and instant messaging technology. There are mobile-specific SNSs (e.g., Dodgeball), but some web-based SNSs also support limited mobile interactions (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, and Cyworld). Many SNSs target people from specific geographical regions or linguistic groups, although this does not always determine the site’s constituency. Orkut, for example, was launched in the United States with an English-only interface, but Portuguese-speaking Brazilians quickly became the dominant user group ( Kopytoff, 2004 ). Some sites are designed with specific ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, political, or other identity-driven categories in mind. There are even SNSs for dogs (Dogster) and cats (Catster), although their owners must manage their profiles.

While SNSs are often designed to be widely accessible, many attract homogeneous populations initially, so it is not uncommon to find groups using sites to segregate themselves by nationality, age, educational level, or other factors that typically segment society (Hargittai, this issue), even if that was not the intention of the designers.

The Early Years

According to the definition above, the first recognizable social network site launched in 1997. SixDegrees.com allowed users to create profiles, list their Friends and, beginning in 1998, surf the Friends lists. Each of these features existed in some form before SixDegrees, of course. Profiles existed on most major dating sites and many community sites. AIM and ICQ buddy lists supported lists of Friends, although those Friends were not visible to others. Classmates.com allowed people to affiliate with their high school or college and surf the network for others who were also affiliated, but users could not create profiles or list Friends until years later. SixDegrees was the first to combine these features.

SixDegrees promoted itself as a tool to help people connect with and send messages to others. While SixDegrees attracted millions of users, it failed to become a sustainable business and, in 2000, the service closed. Looking back, its founder believes that SixDegrees was simply ahead of its time (A. Weinreich, personal communication, July 11, 2007). While people were already flocking to the Internet, most did not have extended networks of friends who were online. Early adopters complained that there was little to do after accepting Friend requests, and most users were not interested in meeting strangers.

From 1997 to 2001, a number of community tools began supporting various combinations of profiles and publicly articulated Friends. AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, and MiGente allowed users to create personal, professional, and dating profiles—users could identify Friends on their personal profiles without seeking approval for those connections (O. Wasow, personal communication, August 16, 2007). Likewise, shortly after its launch in 1999, LiveJournal listed one-directional connections on user pages. LiveJournal’s creator suspects that he fashioned these Friends after instant messaging buddy lists (B. Fitzpatrick, personal communication, June 15, 2007)—on LiveJournal, people mark others as Friends to follow their journals and manage privacy settings. The Korean virtual worlds site Cyworld was started in 1999 and added SNS features in 2001, independent of these other sites (see Kim & Yun, this issue). Likewise, when the Swedish web community LunarStorm refashioned itself as an SNS in 2000, it contained Friends lists, guestbooks, and diary pages (D. Skog, personal communication, September 24, 2007).

The next wave of SNSs began when Ryze.com was launched in 2001 to help people leverage their business networks. Ryze’s founder reports that he first introduced the site to his friends—primarily members of the San Francisco business and technology community, including the entrepreneurs and investors behind many future SNSs (A. Scott, personal communication, June 14, 2007). In particular, the people behind Ryze, Tribe.net , LinkedIn, and Friendster were tightly entwined personally and professionally. They believed that they could support each other without competing ( Festa, 2003 ). In the end, Ryze never acquired mass popularity, Tribe.net grew to attract a passionate niche user base, LinkedIn became a powerful business service, and Friendster became the most significant, if only as “one of the biggest disappointments in Internet history” ( Chafkin, 2007 , p. 1).

Like any brief history of a major phenomenon, ours is necessarily incomplete. In the following section we discuss Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook, three key SNSs that shaped the business, cultural, and research landscape.

The Rise (and Fall) of Friendster

Friendster launched in 2002 as a social complement to Ryze. It was designed to compete with Match.com , a profitable online dating site ( Cohen, 2003 ). While most dating sites focused on introducing people to strangers with similar interests, Friendster was designed to help friends-of-friends meet, based on the assumption that friends-of-friends would make better romantic partners than would strangers (J. Abrams, personal communication, March 27, 2003). Friendster gained traction among three groups of early adopters who shaped the site—bloggers, attendees of the Burning Man arts festival, and gay men ( boyd, 2004 )—and grew to 300,000 users through word of mouth before traditional press coverage began in May 2003 ( O’Shea, 2003 ).

As Friendster’s popularity surged, the site encountered technical and social difficulties ( boyd, 2006b ). Friendster’s servers and databases were ill-equipped to handle its rapid growth, and the site faltered regularly, frustrating users who replaced email with Friendster. Because organic growth had been critical to creating a coherent community, the onslaught of new users who learned about the site from media coverage upset the cultural balance. Furthermore, exponential growth meant a collapse in social contexts: Users had to face their bosses and former classmates alongside their close friends. To complicate matters, Friendster began restricting the activities of its most passionate users.

The initial design of Friendster restricted users from viewing profiles of people who were more than four degrees away (friends-of-friends-of-friends-of-friends). In order to view additional profiles, users began adding acquaintances and interesting-looking strangers to expand their reach. Some began massively collecting Friends, an activity that was implicitly encouraged through a “most popular” feature. The ultimate collectors were fake profiles representing iconic fictional characters: celebrities, concepts, and other such entities. These “Fakesters” outraged the company, who banished fake profiles and eliminated the “most popular” feature ( boyd, in press-b ). While few people actually created Fakesters, many more enjoyed surfing Fakesters for entertainment or using functional Fakesters (e.g., “Brown University”) to find people they knew.

The active deletion of Fakesters (and genuine users who chose non-realistic photos) signaled to some that the company did not share users’ interests. Many early adopters left because of the combination of technical difficulties, social collisions, and a rupture of trust between users and the site ( boyd, 2006b ). However, at the same time that it was fading in the U.S., its popularity skyrocketed in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia ( Goldberg, 2007 ).

SNSs Hit the Mainstream

From 2003 onward, many new SNSs were launched, prompting social software analyst Clay Shirky (2003) to coin the term YASNS: “Yet Another Social Networking Service.” Most took the form of profile-centric sites, trying to replicate the early success of Friendster or target specific demographics. While socially-organized SNSs solicit broad audiences, professional sites such as LinkedIn, Visible Path, and Xing (formerly openBC) focus on business people. “Passion-centric” SNSs like Dogster (T. Rheingold, personal communication, August 2, 2007) help strangers connect based on shared interests. Care2 helps activists meet, Couchsurfing connects travelers to people with couches, and MyChurch joins Christian churches and their members. Furthermore, as the social media and user-generated content phenomena grew, websites focused on media sharing began implementing SNS features and becoming SNSs themselves. Examples include Flickr (photo sharing), Last.FM (music listening habits), and YouTube (video sharing).

With the plethora of venture-backed startups launching in Silicon Valley, few people paid attention to SNSs that gained popularity elsewhere, even those built by major corporations. For example, Google’s Orkut failed to build a sustainable U.S. user base, but a “Brazilian invasion” ( Fragoso, 2006 ) made Orkut the national SNS of Brazil. Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces (a.k.a. MSN Spaces) also launched to lukewarm U.S. reception but became extremely popular elsewhere.

Few analysts or journalists noticed when MySpace launched in Santa Monica, California, hundreds of miles from Silicon Valley. MySpace was begun in 2003 to compete with sites like Friendster, Xanga, and AsianAvenue, according to co-founder Tom Anderson (personal communication, August 2, 2007); the founders wanted to attract estranged Friendster users (T. Anderson, personal communication, February 2, 2006). After rumors emerged that Friendster would adopt a fee-based system, users posted Friendster messages encouraging people to join alternate SNSs, including Tribe.net and MySpace (T. Anderson, personal communication, August 2, 2007). Because of this, MySpace was able to grow rapidly by capitalizing on Friendster’s alienation of its early adopters. One particularly notable group that encouraged others to switch were indie-rock bands who were expelled from Friendster for failing to comply with profile regulations.

While MySpace was not launched with bands in mind, they were welcomed. Indie-rock bands from the Los Angeles region began creating profiles, and local promoters used MySpace to advertise VIP passes for popular clubs. Intrigued, MySpace contacted local musicians to see how they could support them (T. Anderson, personal communication, September 28, 2006). Bands were not the sole source of MySpace growth, but the symbiotic relationship between bands and fans helped MySpace expand beyond former Friendster users. The bands-and-fans dynamic was mutually beneficial: Bands wanted to be able to contact fans, while fans desired attention from their favorite bands and used Friend connections to signal identity and affiliation.

Futhermore, MySpace differentiated itself by regularly adding features based on user demand ( boyd, 2006b ) and by allowing users to personalize their pages. This “feature” emerged because MySpace did not restrict users from adding HTML into the forms that framed their profiles; a copy/paste code culture emerged on the web to support users in generating unique MySpace backgrounds and layouts ( Perkel, in press ).

Teenagers began joining MySpace en masse in 2004. Unlike older users, most teens were never on Friendster—some joined because they wanted to connect with their favorite bands; others were introduced to the site through older family members. As teens began signing up, they encouraged their friends to join. Rather than rejecting underage users, MySpace changed its user policy to allow minors. As the site grew, three distinct populations began to form: musicians/artists, teenagers, and the post-college urban social crowd. By and large, the latter two groups did not interact with one another except through bands. Because of the lack of mainstream press coverage during 2004, few others noticed the site’s growing popularity.

Then, in July 2005, News Corporation purchased MySpace for $580 million ( BBC, 2005 ), attracting massive media attention. Afterwards, safety issues plagued MySpace. The site was implicated in a series of sexual interactions between adults and minors, prompting legal action ( Consumer Affairs, 2006 ). A moral panic concerning sexual predators quickly spread ( Bahney, 2006 ), although research suggests that the concerns were exaggerated. 2

A Global Phenomenon

While MySpace attracted the majority of media attention in the U.S. and abroad, SNSs were proliferating and growing in popularity worldwide. Friendster gained traction in the Pacific Islands, Orkut became the premier SNS in Brazil before growing rapidly in India ( Madhavan, 2007 ), Mixi attained widespread adoption in Japan, LunarStorm took off in Sweden, Dutch users embraced Hyves, Grono captured Poland, Hi5 was adopted in smaller countries in Latin America, South America, and Europe, and Bebo became very popular in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. Additionally, previously popular communication and community services began implementing SNS features. The Chinese QQ instant messaging service instantly became the largest SNS worldwide when it added profiles and made friends visible ( McLeod, 2006 ), while the forum tool Cyworld cornered the Korean market by introducing homepages and buddies ( Ewers, 2006 ).

Blogging services with complete SNS features also became popular. In the U.S., blogging tools with SNS features, such as Xanga, LiveJournal, and Vox, attracted broad audiences. Skyrock reigns in France, and Windows Live Spaces dominates numerous markets worldwide, including in Mexico, Italy, and Spain. Although SNSs like QQ, Orkut, and Live Spaces are just as large as, if not larger than, MySpace, they receive little coverage in U.S. and English-speaking media, making it difficult to track their trajectories.

Expanding Niche Communities

Alongside these open services, other SNSs launched to support niche demographics before expanding to a broader audience. Unlike previous SNSs, Facebook was designed to support distinct college networks only. Facebook began in early 2004 as a Harvard-only SNS ( Cassidy, 2006 ). To join, a user had to have a harvard.edu email address. As Facebook began supporting other schools, those users were also required to have university email addresses associated with those institutions, a requirement that kept the site relatively closed and contributed to users’ perceptions of the site as an intimate, private community.

Beginning in September 2005, Facebook expanded to include high school students, professionals inside corporate networks, and, eventually, everyone. The change to open signup did not mean that new users could easily access users in closed networks—gaining access to corporate networks still required the appropriate .com address, while gaining access to high school networks required administrator approval. (As of this writing, only membership in regional networks requires no permission.) Unlike other SNSs, Facebook users are unable to make their full profiles public to all users. Another feature that differentiates Facebook is the ability for outside developers to build “Applications” which allow users to personalize their profiles and perform other tasks, such as compare movie preferences and chart travel histories.

While most SNSs focus on growing broadly and exponentially, others explicitly seek narrower audiences. Some, like aSmallWorld and BeautifulPeople, intentionally restrict access to appear selective and elite. Others—activity-centered sites like Couchsurfing, identity-driven sites like BlackPlanet, and affiliation-focused sites like MyChurch—are limited by their target demographic and thus tend to be smaller. Finally, anyone who wishes to create a niche social network site can do so on Ning, a platform and hosting service that encourages users to create their own SNSs.

Currently, there are no reliable data regarding how many people use SNSs, although marketing research indicates that SNSs are growing in popularity worldwide ( comScore, 2007 ). This growth has prompted many corporations to invest time and money in creating, purchasing, promoting, and advertising SNSs. At the same time, other companies are blocking their employees from accessing the sites. Additionally, the U.S. military banned soldiers from accessing MySpace ( Frosch, 2007 ) and the Canadian government prohibited employees from Facebook ( Benzie, 2007 ), while the U.S. Congress has proposed legislation to ban youth from accessing SNSs in schools and libraries ( H.R. 5319, 2006 ; S. 49, 2007 ).

The rise of SNSs indicates a shift in the organization of online communities. While websites dedicated to communities of interest still exist and prosper, SNSs are primarily organized around people, not interests. Early public online communities such as Usenet and public discussion forums were structured by topics or according to topical hierarchies, but social network sites are structured as personal (or “egocentric”) networks, with the individual at the center of their own community. This more accurately mirrors unmediated social structures, where “the world is composed of networks, not groups” ( Wellman, 1988 , p. 37). The introduction of SNS features has introduced a new organizational framework for online communities, and with it, a vibrant new research context.

Scholarship concerning SNSs is emerging from diverse disciplinary and methodological traditions, addresses a range of topics, and builds on a large body of CMC research. The goal of this section is to survey research that is directly concerned with social network sites, and in so doing, to set the stage for the articles in this special issue. To date, the bulk of SNS research has focused on impression management and friendship performance, networks and network structure, online/offline connections, and privacy issues.

Impression Management and Friendship Performance

Like other online contexts in which individuals are consciously able to construct an online representation of self—such as online dating profiles and MUDS—SNSs constitute an important research context for scholars investigating processes of impression management, self-presentation, and friendship performance. In one of the earliest academic articles on SNSs, boyd (2004) examined Friendster as a locus of publicly articulated social networks that allowed users to negotiate presentations of self and connect with others. Donath and boyd (2004) extended this to suggest that “public displays of connection” serve as important identity signals that help people navigate the networked social world, in that an extended network may serve to validate identity information presented in profiles.

While most sites encourage users to construct accurate representations of themselves, participants do this to varying degrees. Marwick (2005) found that users on three different SNSs had complex strategies for negotiating the rigidity of a prescribed “authentic” profile, while boyd (in press-b) examined the phenomenon of “Fakesters” and argued that profiles could never be “real.” The extent to which portraits are authentic or playful varies across sites; both social and technological forces shape user practices. Skog (2005) found that the status feature on LunarStorm strongly influenced how people behaved and what they choose to reveal—profiles there indicate one’s status as measured by activity (e.g., sending messages) and indicators of authenticity (e.g., using a “real” photo instead of a drawing).

Another aspect of self-presentation is the articulation of friendship links, which serve as identity markers for the profile owner. Impression management is one of the reasons given by Friendster users for choosing particular friends ( Donath & boyd, 2004 ). Recognizing this, Zinman and Donath (2007) noted that MySpace spammers leverage people’s willingness to connect to interesting people to find targets for their spam.

In their examination of LiveJournal “friendship,” Fono and Raynes-Goldie (2006) described users’ understandings regarding public displays of connections and how the Friending function can operate as a catalyst for social drama. In listing user motivations for Friending, boyd (2006a) points out that “Friends” on SNSs are not the same as “friends” in the everyday sense; instead, Friends provide context by offering users an imagined audience to guide behavioral norms. Other work in this area has examined the use of Friendster Testimonials as self-presentational devices ( boyd & Heer, 2006 ) and the extent to which the attractiveness of one’s Friends (as indicated by Facebook’s “Wall” feature) impacts impression formation ( Walther, Van Der Heide, Kim, & Westerman, in press ).

Networks and Network Structure

Social network sites also provide rich sources of naturalistic behavioral data. Profile and linkage data from SNSs can be gathered either through the use of automated collection techniques or through datasets provided directly from the company, enabling network analysis researchers to explore large-scale patterns of friending, usage, and other visible indicators ( Hogan, in press ), and continuing an analysis trend that started with examinations of blogs and other websites. For instance, Golder, Wilkinson, and Huberman (2007) examined an anonymized dataset consisting of 362 million messages exchanged by over four million Facebook users for insight into Friending and messaging activities. Lampe, Ellison, and Steinfield (2007) explored the relationship between profile elements and number of Facebook friends, finding that profile fields that reduce transaction costs and are harder to falsify are most likely to be associated with larger number of friendship links. These kinds of data also lend themselves well to analysis through network visualization ( Adamic, Buyukkokten, & Adar, 2003 ; Heer & boyd, 2005 ; Paolillo & Wright, 2005 ).

SNS researchers have also studied the network structure of Friendship. Analyzing the roles people played in the growth of Flickr and Yahoo! 360’s networks, Kumar, Novak, and Tomkins (2006) argued that there are passive members, inviters, and linkers “who fully participate in the social evolution of the network” (p. 1). Scholarship concerning LiveJournal’s network has included a Friendship classification scheme ( Hsu, Lancaster, Paradesi, & Weniger, 2007 ), an analysis of the role of language in the topology of Friendship ( Herring et al., 2007 ), research into the importance of geography in Friending ( Liben-Nowell, Novak, Kumar, Raghavan, and Tomkins, 2005 ), and studies on what motivates people to join particular communities ( Backstrom, Huttenlocher, Kleinberg, & Lan, 2006 ). Based on Orkut data, Spertus, Sahami, and Buyukkokten (2005) identified a topology of users through their membership in certain communities; they suggest that sites can use this to recommend additional communities of interest to users. Finally, Liu, Maes, and Davenport (2006) argued that Friend connections are not the only network structure worth investigating. They examined the ways in which the performance of tastes (favorite music, books, film, etc.) constitutes an alternate network structure, which they call a “taste fabric.”

Bridging Online and Offline Social Networks

Although exceptions exist, the available research suggests that most SNSs primarily support pre-existing social relations. Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe (2007) suggest that Facebook is used to maintain existing offline relationships or solidify offline connections, as opposed to meeting new people. These relationships may be weak ties, but typically there is some common offline element among individuals who friend one another, such as a shared class at school. This is one of the chief dimensions that differentiate SNSs from earlier forms of public CMC such as newsgroups ( Ellison et al., 2007 ). Research in this vein has investigated how online interactions interface with offline ones. For instance, Lampe, Ellison, and Steinfield (2006) found that Facebook users engage in “searching” for people with whom they have an offline connection more than they “browse” for complete strangers to meet. Likewise, Pew research found that 91% of U.S. teens who use SNSs do so to connect with friends ( Lenhart & Madden, 2007 ).

Given that SNSs enable individuals to connect with one another, it is not surprising that they have become deeply embedded in user’s lives. In Korea, Cyworld has become an integral part of everyday life— Choi (2006) found that 85% of that study’s respondents “listed the maintenance and reinforcement of pre-existing social networks as their main motive for Cyworld use” (p. 181). Likewise, boyd (2008) argues that MySpace and Facebook enable U.S. youth to socialize with their friends even when they are unable to gather in unmediated situations; she argues that SNSs are “networked publics” that support sociability, just as unmediated public spaces do.

Popular press coverage of SNSs has emphasized potential privacy concerns, primarily concerning the safety of younger users ( George, 2006 ; Kornblum & Marklein, 2006 ). Researchers have investigated the potential threats to privacy associated with SNSs. In one of the first academic studies of privacy and SNSs, Gross and Acquisti (2005) analyzed 4,000 Carnegie Mellon University Facebook profiles and outlined the potential threats to privacy contained in the personal information included on the site by students, such as the potential ability to reconstruct users’ social security numbers using information often found in profiles, such as hometown and date of birth.

Acquisti and Gross (2006) argue that there is often a disconnect between students’ desire to protect privacy and their behaviors, a theme that is also explored in Stutzman’s (2006) survey of Facebook users and Barnes’s (2006) description of the “privacy paradox” that occurs when teens are not aware of the public nature of the Internet. In analyzing trust on social network sites, Dwyer, Hiltz, and Passerini (2007) argued that trust and usage goals may affect what people are willing to share—Facebook users expressed greater trust in Facebook than MySpace users did in MySpace and thus were more willing to share information on the site.

In another study examining security issues and SNSs, Jagatic, Johnson, Jakobsson, and Menczer (2007) used freely accessible profile data from SNSs to craft a “phishing” scheme that appeared to originate from a friend on the network; their targets were much more likely to give away information to this “friend” than to a perceived stranger. Survey data offer a more optimistic perspective on the issue, suggesting that teens are aware of potential privacy threats online and that many are proactive about taking steps to minimize certain potential risks. Pew found that 55% of online teens have profiles, 66% of whom report that their profile is not visible to all Internet users ( Lenhart & Madden, 2007 ). Of the teens with completely open profiles, 46% reported including at least some false information.

Privacy is also implicated in users’ ability to control impressions and manage social contexts. Boyd (in press-a) asserted that Facebook’s introduction of the “News Feed” feature disrupted students’ sense of control, even though data exposed through the feed were previously accessible. Preibusch, Hoser, Gürses, and Berendt (2007) argued that the privacy options offered by SNSs do not provide users with the flexibility they need to handle conflicts with Friends who have different conceptions of privacy; they suggest a framework for privacy in SNSs that they believe would help resolve these conflicts.

SNSs are also challenging legal conceptions of privacy. Hodge (2006) argued that the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution and legal decisions concerning privacy are not equipped to address social network sites. For example, do police officers have the right to access content posted to Facebook without a warrant? The legality of this hinges on users’ expectation of privacy and whether or not Facebook profiles are considered public or private.

Other Research

In addition to the themes identified above, a growing body of scholarship addresses other aspects of SNSs, their users, and the practices they enable. For example, scholarship on the ways in which race and ethnicity ( Byrne, in press ; Gajjala, 2007 ), religion ( Nyland & Near, 2007 ), gender ( Geidner, Flook, & Bell, 2007 ; Hjorth & Kim, 2005 ), and sexuality connect to, are affected by, and are enacted in social network sites raise interesting questions about how identity is shaped within these sites. Fragoso (2006) examined the role of national identity in SNS use through an investigation into the “Brazilian invasion” of Orkut and the resulting culture clash between Brazilians and Americans on the site. Other scholars are beginning to do cross-cultural comparisons of SNS use— Hjorth and Yuji (in press) compare Japanese usage of Mixi and Korean usage of Cyworld, while Herring et al. (2007) examine the practices of users who bridge different languages on LiveJournal—but more work in this area is needed.

Scholars are documenting the implications of SNS use with respect to schools, universities, and libraries. For example, scholarship has examined how students feel about having professors on Facebook ( Hewitt & Forte, 2006 ) and how faculty participation affects student-professor relations ( Mazer, Murphy, & Simonds, 2007 ). Charnigo and Barnett-Ellis (2007) found that librarians are overwhelmingly aware of Facebook and are against proposed U.S. legislation that would ban minors from accessing SNSs at libraries, but that most see SNSs as outside the purview of librarianship. Finally, challenging the view that there is nothing educational about SNSs, Perkel (in press) analyzed copy/paste practices on MySpace as a form of literacy involving social and technical skills.

This overview is not comprehensive due to space limitations and because much work on SNSs is still in the process of being published. Additionally, we have not included literature in languages other than English (e.g., Recuero, 2005 on social capital and Orkut), due to our own linguistic limitations.

The articles in this section address a variety of social network sites—BlackPlanet, Cyworld, Dodgeball, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube—from multiple theoretical and methodological angles, building on previous studies of SNSs and broader theoretical traditions within CMC research, including relationship maintenance and issues of identity, performance, privacy, self-presentation, and civic engagement.

These pieces collectively provide insight into some of the ways in which online and offline experiences are deeply entwined. Using a relational dialectics approach, Kyung-Hee Kim and Haejin Yun analyze how Cyworld supports both interpersonal relations and self-relation for Korean users. They trace the subtle ways in which deeply engrained cultural beliefs and activities are integrated into online communication and behaviors on Cyworld—the online context reinforces certain aspects of users’ cultural expectations about relationship maintenance (e.g., the concept of reciprocity), while the unique affordances of Cyworld enable participants to overcome offline constraints. Dara Byrne uses content analysis to examine civic engagement in forums on BlackPlanet and finds that online discussions are still plagued with the problems offline activists have long encountered. Drawing on interview and observation data, Lee Humphreys investigates early adopters’ practices involving Dodgeball, a mobile social network service. She looks at the ways in which networked communication is reshaping offline social geography.

Other articles in this collection illustrate how innovative research methods can elucidate patterns of behavior that would be indistinguishable otherwise. For instance, Hugo Liu examines participants’ performance of tastes and interests by analyzing and modeling the preferences listed on over 127,000 MySpace profiles, resulting in unique “taste maps.” Likewise, through survey data collected at a college with diverse students in the U.S., Eszter Hargittai illuminates usage patterns that would otherwise be masked. She finds that adoption of particular services correlates with individuals’ race and parental education level.

Existing theory is deployed, challenged, and extended by the approaches adopted in the articles in this section. Judith Donath extends signaling theory to explain different tactics SNS users adopt to reduce social costs while managing trust and identity. She argues that the construction and maintenance of relations on SNSs is akin to “social grooming.” Patricia Lange complicates traditional dichotomies between “public” and “private” by analyzing how YouTube participants blur these lines in their video-sharing practices.

The articles in this collection highlight the significance of social network sites in the lives of users and as a topic of research. Collectively, they show how networked practices mirror, support, and alter known everyday practices, especially with respect to how people present (and hide) aspects of themselves and connect with others. The fact that participation on social network sites leaves online traces offers unprecedented opportunities for researchers. The scholarship in this special theme section takes advantage of this affordance, resulting in work that helps explain practices online and offline, as well as those that blend the two environments.

The work described above and included in this special theme section contributes to an on-going dialogue about the importance of social network sites, both for practitioners and researchers. Vast, uncharted waters still remain to be explored. Methodologically, SNS researchers’ ability to make causal claims is limited by a lack of experimental or longitudinal studies. Although the situation is rapidly changing, scholars still have a limited understanding of who is and who is not using these sites, why, and for what purposes, especially outside the U.S. Such questions will require large-scale quantitative and qualitative research. Richer, ethnographic research on populations more difficult to access (including non-users) would further aid scholars’ ability to understand the long-term implications of these tools. We hope that the work described here and included in this collection will help build a foundation for future investigations of these and other important issues surrounding social network sites.

We are grateful to the external reviewers who volunteered their time and expertise to review papers and contribute valuable feedback and to those practitioners and analysts who provided information to help shape the history section. Thank you also to Susan Herring, whose patience and support appeared infinite.

To differentiate the articulated list of Friends on SNSs from the colloquial term “friends,” we capitalize the former.

Although one out of seven teenagers received unwanted sexual solicitations online, only 9% came from people over the age of 25 ( Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor, 2006 ). Research suggests that popular narratives around sexual predators on SNSs are misleading—cases of unsuspecting teens being lured by sexual predators are rare ( Finkelhor, Ybarra, Lenhart, boyd, & Lordan, 2007 ). Furthermore, only .08% of students surveyed by the National School Boards Association (2007) met someone in person from an online encounter without permission from a parent.

Acquisti , A. , & Gross , R . ( 2006 ). Imagined communities: Awareness, information sharing, and privacy on the Facebook . In P. Golle & G. Danezis (Eds.), Proceedings of 6th Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (pp. 36 – 58 ). Cambridge, UK : Robinson College .

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National School Boards Association . ( 2007, July ). Creating and connecting: Research and guidelines on online social—and educational—networking . Alexandria, VA. Retrieved September 23, 2007 from http://www.nsba.org/site/docs/41400/41340.pdf

Nyland , R. , & Near , C . ( 2007, February ). Jesus is my friend: Religiosity as a mediating factor in Internet social networking use . Paper presented at AEJMC Midwinter Conference, Reno, NV.

O’Shea , W . ( 2003, July 4-10 ). Six Degrees of sexual frustration: Connecting the dates with Friendster.com . Village Voice . Retrieved July 21, 2007 from http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0323,oshea, 44576, 1.html

Paolillo , J. C. , & Wright , E . ( 2005 ). Social network analysis on the semantic web: Techniques and challenges for visualizing FOAF . In V. Geroimenko & C. Chen (Eds.), Visualizing the Semantic Web (pp. 229 – 242 ). Berlin : Springer .

Perkel , D . (in press). Copy and paste literacy? Literacy practices in the production of a MySpace profile . In K. Drotner , H. S. Jensen , & K. Schroeder (Eds.), Informal Learning and Digital Media: Constructions, Contexts, Consequences . Newcastle, UK : Cambridge Scholars Press .

Preibusch , S. , Hoser , B. , Gürses , S. , & Berendt , B . ( 2007, June ). Ubiquitous social networks—opportunities and challenges for privacy-aware user modelling . Proceedings of Workshop on Data Mining for User Modeling . Corfu, Greece. Retrieved October 20, 2007 from http://vasarely.wiwi.hu-berlin.de/DM.UM07/Proceedings/05-Preibusch.pdf

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danah m. boyd is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley and a Fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Her research focuses on how people negotiate mediated contexts like social network sites for sociable purposes.

Address: 102 South Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720–4600, USA

Nicole B. Ellison is an assistant professor in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media at Michigan State University. Her research explores issues of self-presentation, relationship development, and identity in online environments such as weblogs, online dating sites, and social network sites.

Address: 403 Communication Arts and Sciences, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA

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Social Networking Sites Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on social networking sites.

Social networking sites are a great platform for people to connect with their loved ones. It helps in increasing communication and making connections with people all over the world. Although people believe that social networking sites are harmful, they are also very beneficial.

Furthermore, we can classify social networking sites as per blogging, vlogging, podcasting and more. We use social networking sites for various uses. It helps us greatly; however, it also is very dangerous. We must monitor the use of social networking sites and limit their usage so it does not take over our lives.

Advantage and Disadvantages of Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites are everywhere now. In other words, they have taken over almost every sphere of life. They come with both, advantages as well as disadvantages. If we talk about the educational field, these sites enhance education by having an influence on the learners. They can explore various topics for their projects.

Furthermore, the business field benefits a lot from social networking sites. The companies use social networking sites to connect better with their potential clients and business partners. Moreover, people in search of jobs use the sites to connect better with employers and firms. This gives them a great opportunity to seek better jobs.

Read 500+ Words Essay on Social Media here.

On the other hand, the disadvantages of social networking sites are also very high. They give birth to cybercrimes like cyberbullying , sexual exploitation, money scams and more. It is very harmful to kids as people make them victims of pornography and more. It also gives easy access to the pedophiles of children’s information.

Most importantly, social networking sites are very addictive. They drop the productivity levels of people. Students waste their time using it and get distracted easily from their studies. Moreover, it makes them inactive and limits their physical activities.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Famous Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites have created a massive presence in today’s world. While there are many types of these sites, some are more famous than the others.

For instance, Facebook is the largest social networking site. It has more than 1 billion users which keep increasing every day. Moreover, it also helps you promote your business or brand through ads.

Secondly, there is Instagram. It is owned by Facebook only. Similarly, this app allows you to share photos and videos with your followers. It gives users a lot of filters to beautify your photos.

Furthermore, Twitter is also a great social networking site. It is mostly used by celebrities. This site allows you to post short messages called tweets to share your thoughts. Twitter is a great platform to convey your message in limited words.

Moreover, we have LinkedIn. This is one of the most sought after sites which allow professionals to locate and hire employees. Subsequently, it is available in more than twenty languages to give a user-friendly interface.

Finally, we have WhatsApp. Though it entered the game quite late, this instant messaging app made a place for itself instantaneously. Facebook acquired this app as well. It allows you to share text messages, images, videos, audios, documents and more.

In short, social networking sites are a bane and a boon. It depends on us how we use to. Anything in excess is harmful; likewise, social networking sites are too. Use them for your benefit and do not let them control your life.

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Reading, Writing, Relationships: The Impact of Social Network Sites on Relationships and Well-Being

The social web has emerged concurrent with a decline in Americans' community involvement and number of close friendships. Hundreds of millions of people connect online, but they appear to have fewer confidants and trust each other less. However, contrasting research finds that web users have better social integration and stronger relationships than their offline counterparts. This thesis resolves these contradictory views through a detailed examination of social network site (SNS) use and changes in relationships and individual well-being.

The research is conducted at multiple levels looking at how different types of SNS use—direct interaction with others and more “passive consumption” of social news—influence the number and quality of individuals’ social ties and their aggregate social capital and well-being, including perceived social support, happiness, and physical health. The studies combine objective measures of SNS use (communication activity from the server logs of a popular social networking site) with self-reports of tie strength and well-being to accurately differentiate types of use with different partners. Longitudinal methods reveal how well-being changes over time with SNS use and are moderated by personal characteristics such as social communication skill and recent job loss.

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The rise of social media

Social media sites are used by more than two-thirds of internet users. how has social media grown over time.

This article is an archived version of an article published in 2019. Due to data availability, the article and charts will not be updated.

Facebook, the largest social media platform in the world, had 2.4 billion users in 2019. Other social media platforms, including YouTube and WhatsApp, also had over one billion users each.

These numbers are huge – in 2019, there were 7.7 billion people worldwide, with at least 3.5 billion online . This means social media platforms were used by one in three people worldwide and more than two-thirds of all Internet users.

Social media has changed the world. The rapid and vast adoption of these technologies is changing how we find partners , access information from the news, and organize to demand political change .

Who uses social media? When did the rise of social media start, and how has the number of users changed over time? Here we answer these and other key questions to understand the history of social media worldwide.

We begin with an outline of key trends and conclude with a perspective on the social media adoption rate relative to other modern communication technologies.

Social media started in the early 2000s

MySpace was the first social media site to reach a million monthly active users – it achieved this milestone around 2004. This is arguably the beginning of social media as we know it. 1

In the chart, we plot monthly active users across various platforms since 2004.

Some large social media sites, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Reddit, have been around for ten or more years, but others are much newer.

TikTok, for example, launched in September 2016, and by mid-2018, it had already reached half a billion users. To put this in perspective: TikTok gained, on average, about 20 million new users per month over this period.

The data also shows rapid changes in the opposite direction. Once-dominant platforms have disappeared. In 2008, Hi5, MySpace, and Friendster were close competitors to Facebook, yet by 2012 they had virtually no market share. The case of MySpace is remarkable, considering that in 2006 it temporarily surpassed Google as the most visited website in the US.

Most social media platforms that survived the last decade have shifted significantly in what they offer users. Twitter, for example, didn’t allow users to upload videos or images initially. Since 2011 this has been possible, and today, more than 50% of the content viewed on Twitter includes images and videos.

Facebook dominated the social media market for a decade, but five other platforms also have more than half a billion users

With 2.3 billion users, Facebook was the most popular social media platform in 2019. YouTube, Instagram, and WeChat followed, with over a billion users. Tumblr and TikTok came next, with over half a billion users.

The bar chart shows a ranking of the top social media platforms.

Some social media sites are particularly popular among specific population groups

The aggregate numbers mask a great deal of heterogeneity across platforms. Some social media sites are much more popular than others among specific population groups.

In general, young people are more likely to use social media than older people. But some platforms are much more popular among younger people. This is shown in the chart where we plot the breakdown of social media use by age group in the US.

For Snapchat and Instagram, the ‘age gradient’ is exceptionally steep – the popularity of these platforms drops much faster with age. Most people under 25 use Snapchat (73%), while only 3% of people over 65 use it.

Since these platforms are relatively new, it’s hard to know how much of this age gradient results from a “cohort effect”. In other words: it’s unclear whether today’s young people will continue using Snapchat as they age. If they do, the age gradient will narrow.

Let’s now look at gender differences.

This chart shows the percentage of men and women that used different platforms in the US in 2021—the diagonal line marks parity. Sites above the diagonal line are more popular among women, and those below are more popular among men.

For some platforms, the gender differences are substantial. The share of women who used Pinterest was 3 times as high as that of men using this platform. For Reddit, it was the other way around: the share of men was twice as high.

In rich countries, almost all young people use social media

From a back-of-the-envelope calculation, we know that if Facebook had 2.3 billion users in 2019, then at least 30% of the world was using social media. 2 This is just an average – usage rates were much higher for some world regions, specifically for some population groups.

Young people tend to use social media more frequently. In fact, in rich countries where access to the Internet is nearly universal , the vast majority of young adults use it.

Our chart shows the proportion of people aged 16 to 24 who used social networks across various countries. As we can see, the average for the OECD is close to 90%.

If today’s young adults continue using social media throughout their lives, then it’s likely that social media will continue growing rapidly as Internet adoption expands throughout lower-income countries .

The rise of social media in rich countries has come together with an increase in the amount of time spent online

The increase in social media use over the last decade has, of course, come together with a large increase in the amount of time people spend online.

In the US, adults spend more than 6 hours daily on digital media (apps and websites accessed through mobile phones, tablets, computers, and other connected devices such as game consoles). As the chart shows, this growth has been driven almost entirely by additional time spent on smartphones and tablets. 3

According to a survey from the Pew Research Center, adults aged 18 to 29 in the US are more likely to get news indirectly via social media than directly from print newspapers or news sites. They also report being online “almost constantly” . 4

Evidence shows that in other rich countries, people also spend many hours per day online. The following chart shows how many hours young people spend online across various rich countries. As we can see, the average for the OECD is more than 4 hours per day; in some countries, the average is above 6 hours per day.

Some perspective on how fast and profound these rapid changes are

The percentage of US adults who use social media increased from 5% in 2005 to 79% in 2019. Even on a global stage, the speed of diffusion is striking: Facebook surged from covering around 1.5% of the world population in 2008 to around 30% in 2018. 5

How does this compare to the diffusion of other communication technologies in today's everyday life?

The following chart provides some perspective.

Social media’s growth in the US is comparable – in speed and, to some extent, reach – to most modern communication-enabling technologies, including computers, smartphones, and the Internet.

The rise of social media is an extraordinary example of how quickly and drastically social behaviors can change: Something that is today part of the everyday life of one-third of the world population was unthinkable less than a generation ago.

Rapid changes like those brought about by social media always spark fears about possible negative effects. Specifically, in the context of social media, a key question is whether these new communication technologies are harming our mental health – this is an important question and we cover the evidence in another article on Our World in Data.

There were, of course, earlier, much smaller predecessors of social networking websites. The first recognizable social media site, in the format we know today, was Six Degrees – a platform created in 1997 that enabled users to upload a profile and make friends with other users. At the core, the features that define a social media platform are (i) profiles for users, (ii) the ability for users to upload content constantly, and (iii) the ability for users to discuss content and connect with other users.

To be precise, Facebook had 2.3 billion ‘active users.’ There may be some discrepancies between the number of ‘active users’ and the number of people since one person could, in theory, maintain multiple accounts. In practice, these discrepancies are likely small because most social media platforms, including Facebook, have policies and checks to avoid multiple accounts per person.

Digital media contrasts with print media (including books, newspapers, and magazines) and other traditional or analog media (including TV, movies, and radio).

According to the survey from Pew Research, 36% of adults 18 to 29 in the US say they ‘often get news via social media,’ which is higher than the share saying they ‘often get news via other platforms,’ such as news sites, TV, radio or print newspapers. From the same survey, we also know that 48% of adults 18 to 29 say they go online almost constantly, and 46% say they go online multiple times daily.

The US social media adoption data is here . Regarding Facebook’s global numbers: In 2018, Facebook had 2.26 billion users, and in 2008 it had 100 million; the world population in 2008 was 6.8 billion, and in 2018 it was 7.63 billion (you can check the population data here .)

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The Use of Social Networking Sites and Its Impact on Adolescents’ Emotional Well-Being: a Scoping Review

Rossella bottaro.

Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, University of Enna “Kore”, Cittadella Universitaria, 94100 Enna, Italy

Palmira Faraci

Purpose of review.

The rapid development of social networking sites (SNSs) has affected adolescents’ well-being with great impact on social experience. In this scoping review, we aimed to map out what is known from the most recent literature about adolescents’ emotional well-being and the role of emotional regulation skills in preventing problematic SNS use. We used the Arksey and O’Malley methodological framework, and we based the study selection procedure on the PRISMA process. Then, we selected 52 English and peer-reviewed papers from PubMed, MEDLINE, PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, Wiley Online Library, and Web of Science.

Recent Findings

We found both positive and negative effects of SNS use on adolescents’ emotions with online self-presentation and social comparison as key mechanisms to explain differences in subjective well-being. The risk of developing problematic use of SNSs is influenced by time spent on SNSs, active or passive use, and adolescents’ social and emotional skills.

This review suggested the importance of emotional experiences and social support in both in-person and online interactions. Future research is needed to provide the basis for a better forthcoming classification of problematic SNS use.

Introduction

With the rapid development of information technologies, social networking sites (SNSs) play an increasingly important role in providing new interpersonal communication channels [ 1 ]. According to Kuss and Griffhits [ 2 ], SNSs are «virtual communities where users can create individual public profiles, interact with real-life friends, and meet other people based on shared interests.» For the “digital native” [ 3 ] generation, online interaction and support may be as effective as face-to-face contact [ 4 ••], and life without digital communication is inconceivable [ 5 ]. The first SNS was SixDegrees in 1997, but it would not be until 2003 that the first social network, MySpace, would be known worldwide.

Despite the large number of studies that have investigated SNSs, there continues to be a gap in our understanding of why young people use SNSs (for a review: [ 6 ]). Early research has focused on digital platforms that exhibit similar characteristics for unraveling types of user behaviors. For example, Brandtzæg and Heim [ 7 ] highlighted that people who choose to use blogs as a medium of immediate social interaction have as a commonality the desire to pour out their feelings. Also, they feel a sense of connection with new and old friends. Other studies have shown that a sense of ownership, visibility, and shared interests [ 8 ] are essential for adolescents’ development. In particular, young girls revealed that they use SNSs to comment on photos, videos, or updates of others, whereas young males were more likely to use SNSs to play games [ 9 ].

Previous research has disagreed on the effect of SNSs on users’ well-being, and the modality of use (e.g., passive or active use) could be a discriminant factor [ 10 , 11 ,  12 ]. Moderate use of SNSs has been found to be associated with greater social support [ 13 ], socialization [ 14 ], participation in public and political life [ 15 ], and affirmation of one’s online identity [ 16 ]. However, Herrero et al. [ 17 ] indicated that social support predicts later addiction to the smartphone and that smartphone addiction decreases social support over time. Further, adolescents do not perceive a real difference between online and “physical” social support [ 4 ••]. Despite these evidences, the problematic use of SNS is not yet recognized in the official clinical classifications (i.e., Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 [ 18 ] and International Classification of Disease-11 [ 19 ]; DSM-5 and ICD-11). It is suggested as a potential condition that requires further investigations based on the purposed criteria for gaming disorder and gambling disorder in ICD-11 [ 20 •].

Based on previous research [ 21 ]—applying the Goffman [ 22 ] dramaturgical model also on digital interactions—SNS users imagine themselves in front of a great audience and create a self-image that is shared daily on their profiles. The younger users post their great moments online―but not their negative moments, experiences, emotions, and so on―so that they can show the best of themselves [ 21 ]. The social comparison with these unreachable models of perfection and happiness can have an unfavorable impact on younger users’ life satisfaction and mental health outcomes [ 23 , 24 ].

Indeed, excessive use of new technologies may increase psychological distress in terms of loneliness, depression, anxiety, and insomnia [ 25 , 26 ,  27 ]. The flow experience of SNS use has been indicated as a key risk factor in the development of addiction due to emotion avoidance [ 28 •], especially for vulnerable populations (e.g., adolescents) showing marked novelty seeking, low self-control [ 29 ], and difficulties in offline emotional relationships [ 30 ].

Thompson [ 31 ] defined emotional regulation as «the extrinsic and intrinsic process responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions, especially their intensive and temporal features to accomplish one’s goal.» According to the Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution Model (I-PACE; [ 32 ••]), deficits in emotion regulation skills may represent a risk factor for substantial and non-substantial addiction [ 33 , 34 ]. Difficulties in emotion regulation were found to be directly and indirectly associated with problematic social media use in a group of Italian adolescents [ 35 ]. Moreover, this theoretical model acknowledges the contribution of mood regulation in lessening the development of internet-use disorders [ 36 ].

Younger people who are more engaged in SNS flow may exhibit the fear of missing out (FOMO), which is described as the “pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent” [ 37 ]. FOMO is a predictor of smartphone addiction [ 38 ] and, in particular, phubbing as its special form. This refers to the act of snubbing others in social relations by focusing on one’s smartphone instead of having a conversation in person [ 38 ]. Adolescents with high levels of parental phubbing showed problematic smartphone use, depression symptoms, and low self-esteem [ 39 •, 40 •].

Current Study

To date, a number of studies have evaluated the impact of SNSs on users’ emotional well-being [ 41 ], but the results are still controversial. Hence, a scoping review—using a systematic approach—may be valuable in providing a broad view on the topic, with a focus on the more recent studies. Therefore, we decided to apply the scoping review technique in order to identify the key concepts/definitions mostly used in the literature so that we could refer to the emotional well-being among adolescents who use SNSs. Our goal included mapping research activity within this specifically delimited area of study and identifying the gaps that may exist within the related literature.

This scoping review may serve as a systematization of the latest literature (i.e., the last 20 years) from a new point of view. Indeed, even though previous reviews concerned the general well-being among adolescent users of SNSs, the present contribution aims to provide a summary of the previous findings specifically related to emotional well-being. This study can be understood as a specific focus on a broad problem because it focuses on emotions as a specific variable instead of generic psychopathological implications (e.g., anxiety and depression). Consistent with this purpose, a scoping review is the most appropriate and robust methodology for our research conduct [ 42 ].

We structured this review according to Arksey and O’Malley’s [ 43 ] methodological framework. A scoping study can provide a rigorous and transparent method of research for mapping research findings compared with a systematic review, even if it is less likely to seek the quality assessment of included studies and the protection against bias risks. According to the required procedure, we adopted the following steps for conducting our scoping study: (1) identifying the research question; (2) identifying relevant studies; (3) study selection, according to the PRISMA statement [ 44 ]; (4) charting the data; and (5) collating, summarizing, and reporting the results.

Identifying the Review Questions

The aim of this scoping review was to map the current literature about the use of SNSs and emotional user experience among adolescent population, identify gaps that may exist within the literature, and consider implications for future research. Specific questions to be addressed included the following: (1) What is known from the existing literature about adolescents’ use of SNSs and its implication on their emotions; and (2) what knowledge is currently available on the role of emotional skills in preventing problematic SNS use?

Study Identification

To find papers concerning adolescents’ emotional experience during the use of SNSs, we searched the following keywords in both the title and abstract: (1) social networking sites OR social media; (2) emotion OR affect OR mood OR feeling OR emotive; and (3) adolescent OR teenager OR young adults OR teen OR youth. We searched the following databases: PubMed, MEDLINE, PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, Wiley Online Library, and Web of Science. To identify most of the available literature, according to the recent diffusion of SNSs, we screened papers published in the last 20 years. According to our eligibility criteria, we selected the following: (1) English full-text papers; (2) papers published in peer-review journals; and (3) papers focused on emotional experiences in adolescence (i.e., from 12 to 18 years old). However, given that the samples often had ranges conflicting with ours, we also included those studies whose samples’ mean age diverged by max 2 SD from our upper margin. Conversely, we excluded the following: (1) dissertation thesis, abstract, and books; (2) studies that referred to other age groups (i.e., children, adults, and old adults); (3) studies that referred to psychiatric illness; and (4) studies related to experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic; we decided not to consider the studies specifically referring to the pandemic because the internet was the only available means of socialization. It would be inadequate to compare results derived from radically different contexts. We also excluded (5) papers not focused directly on emotions as a variable. The study-selection procedure has been shown in the Fig.  1 , which was based on the PRISMA statement [ 44 ].

PRISMA flow chart for steps of scoping review

Study Selection

We analyzed an initial pool of 2387 papers. According to our eligibility criteria, and after deleting 13 duplicates, we screened 2374 papers. Among these studies, 483 were dissertation theses or abstracts, 96 were written in others languages, and the remaining were irrelevant; that is, they did not meet the eligibility criteria. For example, 32 of them were studies conducted on psychiatric adolescents. Finally, we selected 52 papers. Figure  1 presents the PRISMA study-selection process.

Data Charting

Based on Arksey and O’Malley’s [ 43 ] methodological framework, we summarized or charted the 52 selected papers in Table ​ Table1, 1 , which briefly notes studies’ relevant results, sample characteristics, instruments, and methodologies.

Studies characteristics ( N  = 52)

U undetectable; N.A. not applicable

Description of Included Studies

The 52 included studies were conducted in various countries (i.e., Italy, Germany, Turkey, and the USA). According to the timing of SNSs’ worldwide deployment, most of these have been conducted in the last 10 years. Therefore, using a time range of 20 years has shown to be a reasonable choice for a temporal range large enough to include most of the available literature on the topic. We gathered findings from 44,880 participants (range 8–10,563; M age  = 15.19; SD = 1.24). The most used psychometric instrument to evaluate SNS addictive behavior was the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS; [ 45 ]), but some studies used generic scales for measuring internet addiction, such as the Young Internet Addiction Test (YIAT; [ 46 ]), the Smartphone Addiction Scale [ 47 ], and ad hoc questionnaires (for more information, see Table ​ Table1 1 ).

Positive Effects of SNS Use on Adolescents’ Emotions

In the current review, we found various positive effects related to how adolescents use SNSs, especially in socialization, sensation seeking, and entertainment [ 48 , 49 ]. The most important benefit came from the social support provided by online friends or followers. Cole et al. [ 13 ] highlighted that social support, both in-person and online, could offset some of the negative consequences of peers’ victimization and reduce depressive symptoms through the search for online positive emotion [ 50 ]. Indeed, the researchers showed that online social support is less redundant than in-person support among those who already have supportive in-person relationships. Online flow could reduce the feelings of loneliness among adolescents who use SNSs so that they can enhance their existing relationships or look for new friends [ 25 ]. Adolescents reported positive feelings when they received a “like” for their online contents, but they sometimes described these feelings as “false,” “unreal,” and “fleeting” [ 51 ].

The use of a mobile phone, rather than a personal computer, makes it easier to access SNSs and establish constant connection with friends [ 52 ]. Online interactions showed a positive emotional effect on prosocial behavior [ 53 ] and allowed for the formation of groups and online communities [ 54 ]. Moreover, the SNSs could generate a positive emotional contagion due to the vision of positive digital contents [ 55 ••]. Indeed, Vossen and Valkenburg [ 56 ] highlighted that social media use was related with higher cognitive and affective empathy, showing an increased ability to understand and share the feelings of their peers. Finally, these findings suggested that lonely people who have great social skills could improve their emotional well-being on SNSs.

Adolescents’ Online Self-Presentation and Social Comparison

The online relationships are characterized by feedback for the published contents, especially for shared personal photos and videos. Thanks to the various available communication mediums (e.g., photos, texts, and videos), adolescents perceived more authenticity in self-presentation [ 55 ••]. Recent research has shown [ 57 ] that self-construction and distance from others are mostly influenced by receiving positive feedbacks. The “like” mechanism can have an impact on self-acceptance or social isolation and control the association between personality and digital identity. Thus, feedback (“likes”) can be interpreted as measures of self-worth [ 55 ••, 58 ]. However, Shankleman et al. [ 55 ••] underlined that adolescents used SNSs to express their distinctiveness and to maintain a sense of continuity of identity over time.

Several studies [ 10 ,  59 ] have suggested that social comparison is a key mechanism to explain differences in subjective well-being. This comparison was predicted through the passive use of SNSs. In addition, the intensive use of SNSs could reduce self-concept clarity [ 60 ]. Recent literature [ 57 , 61 ] has also shown gender differences in online self-presentation: female adolescents were likely to modify their online self-presentation by editing their photos, which led to lower self-acceptance, including reduced body and life satisfaction [ 10 , 62 ]. Indeed, SNSs make online social status comparisons easier, with negative emotional consequences [ 63 ], regardless of explicit negative comments [ 64 ]. For example, adolescent girls undergoing treatment for obesity «undertook self-presentation strategies to conceal weight-related content such as avoiding showing close-up photos of their bodies and not posting images of unhealthy ‘fattening’ foods» [ 61 ]. Comparing themselves to others predicted objectified body consciousness [ 65 ], increased anxiety symptoms as well as compulsive profile-checking behaviors [ 51 ] for both adolescent girls and boys [ 66 •], and amplified the gap between self-beliefs and perceived peer standards of beauty [ 67 ]. Finally, young males who reported speaking to online friends regarding their personal problems described greater levels of psychological well-being [ 68 ].

Negative Effects of SNS Use on Adolescents’ Emotions

Use of SNSs can also have negative effects [ 63 , 69 ]. When the SNSs are used to escape from the real social world, avoiding negative emotions and in-person interactions, feelings of loneliness and the risk of SNS addiction may be high [ 25 , 70 ]. Some research has also suggested that electronic intrusiveness is associated with in-person dating violence perpetration [ 71 ]. The online risks were associated with both active and passive use [ 72 – 74 ]. However, passive SNS use (i.e., watching videos) was associated with increasing anxious and depressive symptoms and a substantial reduction of life satisfaction, whereas active use (i.e., posting online) was associated with rising users’ well-being and life satisfaction, especially among young girls [ 75 ]. In particular, feelings of depression seemed to trigger higher SNS involvement for girls, and anxious symptoms seemed to trigger higher SNS involvement for boys [ 76 ].

Teenagers themselves perceived the SNSs to be a threat to their mental well-being [ 77 ]. Many adolescents used various strategies to avoid negative feedback, including posting less content than their peers [ 51 ] because of the fear of being judged [ 55 ••]. Indeed, Marin-Lopez et al. [ 78 ] showed that people who use more emotional online content are more exposed to the risk of cybervictimization (e.g., cyberbullying). SNS communities might generate alienation and ostracism [ 54 ]. More lonely adolescents disclosed their personal and relationship information than adolescents with satisfied physical relationships [ 79 ]. Male and older adolescents, who set their SNS profile as public, have a larger online network size, and having strangers on an SNS friend list increases self-disclosure [ 80 ]. Lastly, the amount of time spent on SNSs may affect the risk of addictive behavior and insomnia [ 55 ••, 81 ], especially for adolescents with a dysfunctional attachment to parents and peers [ 55 ••, 82 ]. Some research has highlighted that male and older teenagers are more stressed by SNS use and that they also feel they spend too much time on such platforms [ 55 ••, 83 ], thus showing lower self-esteem and increased instances of depressed mood [ 84 , 85 ]. FOMO is a predictor of SNS use and resulting in detriment of in-person relationships (i.e., phubbing) [ 76 , 86 ].

Emotional Regulation

Emotional regulation skills may be important targets in preventing problematic SNS use [ 1 ,  87 ]. In particular, some research has found an association between moderate levels of SNS disorders and deficits in emotional regulation in both directions [ 35 , 50 , 88 ]. Indeed, access to SNSs may serve to counter emotions like boredom and anger [ 55 ••, 88 , 89 ]. Spada and Marino [ 89 ] showed that emotion regulation has a direct negative effect on problematic internet disorders among adolescents. Also, the ability to recover quickly from negative emotions inversely predicted SNS addiction [ 1 ]. The expression of negative emotions was more reactive in positive than in negative online interactions [ 90 ]. Moreover, based on Marin-Lopez et al. [ 78 ], great levels of online emotional skills protected adolescents from cybervictimization and cyberperpetration. However, other research [ 91 ] has shown that worse emotion recognition predicted SNS addiction.

Finally, two recent studies [ 92 , 93 ] did not show agreement about the differences in emotional sharing between various SNSs. Generally, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat were mostly used to share positive emotions; conversely, Whatsapp, Twitter, and Messenger were mostly used to share negative emotions. In conclusion, the risk of problematic SNS use was higher in adolescents with deficits in emotional regulation [ 66 •].

Of the 52 selected papers, 26 are recent findings (last 5 years). Most of them are cross-sectional studies which investigated the relationship between problematic SNS use and indicators of psychological disease (e.g., anxiety and depression). These results are essentially in line with prior evidences, but they also improve the previous point of view with new studied variables. Moreover, 5 of the 6 reviews are recent: this shows the urgency of results’ systematization in order to finally propose a nomothetic classification of the disorder in the main diagnostic manuals [ 20 •].

This scoping review included 52 papers that studied the emotional experiences associated with SNS use during adolescence. Most of the articles were published in the last 10 years. This has shown that choosing a time range of 20 years has offered a sufficiently broad perspective in offering a complete review on the subject. The most used psychometric scale for evaluating SNS addictive behavior is the BSMAS, but the use of various scales in the selected papers has highlighted its ambiguous theoretical definition. In fact, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5; [ 18 ]) has not yet definitively included SNS addiction. Further research, as well as the present scoping review, may be worthwhile in increasing and systematizing both empirical and theoretical knowledge, leading to progress in diagnostic classification with consequent clinical implications, such as the individuation of risk and protective factors.

Some studies have shown the positive effects of SNS use for the socialization and reduction of psychological symptoms [ 49 , 50 ]. The mobile devices increased the frequency of SNS use [ 52 ], and online social support was less redundant than in-person support [ 94 ]. Indeed, online friends might be more numerous than offline ones, and feedback from others (i.e., “likes” and comments) may be more numerous in online spaces than in physical interactions [ 51 ]. Adolescents who shared their emotions on SNS improved their cognitive and affective empathy [ 56 ] using online communities to improve their social skills [ 54 ] with positive emotional contagion [ 55 ••]. Based on these findings, online relationships—also increased by the portability of smartphones that establish a constant sense of closeness [ 95 ]—could be a valuable source of positive emotions capable of improving interactions with old and new friends. As a practical implication, planning a common set of rules for civil coexistence in online environments is crucial in encouraging healthy and enriching relationships. Formal and informal learning contexts, such as schools and cultural associations, should promote opportunities to address these issues by exploiting the internet resources and being a better online citizen.

However, SNSs are also an online space providing wider opportunities for adolescent users to interact with other peers. According to previous research [ 57 ], the “like” mechanism can be a negative emotional experience when the published contents (i.e., photos and videos) do not receive the expected feedback. Both self-acceptance and self-worth [ 58 ] might be negatively affected by receiving a few likes on one’s own photos [ 51 ], even if the young males disclosing their own personal problems receive good online support [ 68 ]. As a matter of fact, feedback from others, especially from peers, is particularly significant during adolescence. Also, the distress caused by a lack of approval is a risk factor for emotion regulation, psychopathology, and life satisfaction [ 10 , 63 , 64 ], especially when referring to body consciousness and body perfect ideal issues [ 55 ••, 65 , 67 ]. As a clinical implication, self-esteem–enhancement programs could prevent the development of psychiatric symptoms, including addictive behaviors and emotional consequences. Some research [ 59 ] has shown that online social comparison is a key mechanism in explaining the impact on subjective well-being. Because people look at the profiles of successful others, their own life can never live up to these unattainable models. Hence, clinical practice with adolescents (who are also creating their identity through comparison with peers’ online profiles) should pay attention to their online activities because these experiences are as impactful as those that are in person. Young girls appeared to be more vulnerable to these risks than boys [ 57 ]. As a possible explanation, adolescent girls are more interested in social interactions than boys. Further empirical observations are necessary to study the gender differences in the motivation to stay online (e.g., using a between-subjects design).

When SNSs are used to escape from the real social world, avoiding in-person interactions and negative emotions, the risk of developing SNS addiction increased [ 25 , 72 , 75 , 81 , 84 ]. As a possible explanation, the online world is a space where in-person social interactions are avoided, thus preventing them from developing new social skills. As a result, users keep their difficulties to themselves by continuing to isolate themselves from social reality. On a clinical level, it is important to prevent social isolation and social withdrawal when working in groups and practicing social skills. Research has also shown differences in gender-related SNS addiction: Depressive symptoms triggered higher SNS engagement for girls, whereas anxious symptoms triggered higher SNS engagement for boys [ 76 ]. As a practical implication, online contents related to anxious and depressive symptoms should receive more attention to prevent the development of psychological problems. For example, consideration for negative emotional content could be an external trigger for self-evaluation. Indeed, people who used more emotional online content received heightened exposure to the risk of cybervictimization [ 78 ]. Also, lonely older male teenagers shared more personal information, especially when they used a public profile with a large number of unknown online friends [ 79 , 80 ]. Based on these findings, male adolescents who are lacking social skills are likely to try to overcome their own difficulties through virtual relationships that provide an illusory sense of protection, especially with unknown others. Therefore, it would be desirable to increase involvement in positive social learning experiences for adolescents, even within formal institutions such as schools, in order to prevent problematic internet use and possible social withdrawal. People who experienced dysfunctional attachment to parents and peers [ 82 ] and FOMO spent more time engaged in SNS flow, regardless of their social relationships (i.e., phubbing) [ 76 , 83 , 86 ]. Based on these foregoing facts, psychologists should pay attention to adolescents’ online identity and shared posts in order to form a complete picture of their social resources. To improve the knowledge centered on communication skills in relevant contexts, future research could focus on the differences between online and offline interactions.

Lastly, we reviewed papers examining emotion regulation patterns in SNSs. Users who are able to recover quickly from negative emotion, as well as report great levels of online emotional skills, showed less risk of developing an addictive behavior [ 1 , 29 , 50 , 66 •, 87 – 89 ]. SNS users take advantage of emotion-related skills to widen their chances of meeting new friends. However, the results are controversial. Indeed, previous research [ 90 ] has highlighted that positive emotion expressions were more reactive than negative ones in online interactions. As a possible explanation, negative emotion expressions may be especially impactful for adolescents’ online reputation. Working on social skills may be beneficial in achieving improved online prosocial behavior that could prevent cybervictimizations. Additional research [ 91 ] has not found any association between emotional recognition and SNS addiction. Specifically, according to the biopsychosocial model, emotional dysfunction may not be enough to explain the SNS addiction process, which involves a number of factors. Further research is needed to overcome these inconsistencies. Finally, no agreement emerged regarding the positive or negative prevalence of emotional content in various online platforms [ 92 ].

In conclusion, in the present scoping review, we aimed to elucidate gaps in the literature regarding the impact of SNSs on users’ emotional well-being. Moderate use of these online spaces could serve as an avenue for improving social relationships through the provided online social support from friends and followers. However, excessive use could be a risk factor for SNS addiction, especially when SNS became a space to escape from emotions. Further research should study constructs related to emotional well-being in order to improve theoretical knowledge and develop training programs for practicing online social skills. With regards to the role of emotion regulation in protecting against problematic SNS use, emotional and social skills could increase adolescents’ ability to establish satisfactory relationships in both physical and online contexts. Socially competent adolescents may be able to recognize the boundaries of online information-sharing practice, thus receiving social support without violating their personal privacy.

Review Limitations

The results of this scoping review should be interpreted with caution because of some limitations. The first notable limitation is that the data consisted of only 52 empirical studies published in peer-reviewed international journals in English in the last 20 years. Furthermore, we selected the most recent studies on the emotional well-being of adolescents using SNSs. However, we could not identify possible differences in the purpose of SNS use among adolescents with respect to age subgroups because of the limited data. Further research should expand on age differences in order to determine the distribution of SNS addiction across different adolescent age subgroups because variations in the stage of maturity are not uncommon. Likewise, the results of the study do raise a concern as to whether the methodology used in the examined studies (i.e., cross-sectional, longitudinal, and review) might introduce bias. However, analyzing these biases goes beyond the objectives of a scoping review. Further research should consider these methodological aspects and discuss the effect sizes of the detected associations.

In addition, we selected generic search keywords (i.e., emotion, affect, mood, and feeling); as a result, some documents focusing on specific emotions (e.g., happiness, fear, and anger) could have been excluded. Consistent with the wide objective of the present scoping review, we chose this solution as the most effective one. Lastly, in accordance with Arksey and O’Malley [ 43 ], we used a scoping review to explore the current knowledge about a very broad and complex topic, but this method has some well-known limits. When the number of papers analyzing specific emotions increases, future studies should summarize the theoretical and empirical evidences by means of systematic review or meta-analysis.

This scoping review provided initial evidences to understand the implications of SNS use on adolescents’ emotional well-being. The goal was to provide a review of more recent theoretical and empirical studies in order to add to the knowledge on this topic and provide a basis for a better forthcoming classification of SNS addiction (or problematic use). Our results suggested the importance of emotional experiences and social support in both in-person and online relationships. According to the great prevalence of SNSs in modern life, these findings encourage further investigations into psychological needs and disorders connected to SNS use, with the aim of developing a scientific knowledge base regarding this widespread behavior among adolescents.

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All human and animal studies have been approved by the appropriate ethics committee and have therefore been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1975 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. Participants accepted an informed consent.

The authors declare no competing interests.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Internet Use Disorders .

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Spending too much time on social media and doomscrolling? The problem might be FOMO

Senior Lecturer - Psychology | Chair, Researchers in Behavioural Addictions, Alcohol and Drugs (BAAD), Charles Darwin University

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Kim M Caudwell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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For as long as we have used the internet to communicate and connect with each other , it has influenced how we think, feel and behave.

During the COVID pandemic, many of us were “cut off” from our social worlds through restrictions, lockdowns and mandates. Understandably, many of us tried to find ways to connect online .

Now, as pandemic restrictions have lifted, some of the ways we use the internet have become concerning. Part of what drives problematic internet use may be something most of us are familiar with – the fear of missing out, or FOMO.

In our latest research , my colleagues and I investigated the role FOMO plays in two kinds of internet use: problematic social media use and “doomscrolling”.

What are FOMO, problematic social media use and doomscrolling?

FOMO is the fear some of us experience when we get a sense of “missing out” on things happening in our social scene. Psychology researchers have been studying FOMO for more than a decade , and it has consistently been linked to mental health and wellbeing , alcohol use and problematic social media use .

Social media use becomes a problem for people when they have difficulty controlling urges to use social media, have difficulty cutting back on use, and where the use has a negative impact on their everyday life.

Doomscrolling is characterised by a need to constantly look at and seek out “bad” news . Doomscrollers may constantly refresh their news feeds or stay up late to read bad news.

While problematic social media use has been around for a while, doomscrolling seems to be a more recent phenomenon – attracting research attention during and following the pandemic.

What we tried to find out

In our study, we wanted to test the idea that FOMO leads individuals to engage in problematic use behaviours due to their difficulty in managing the “fear” in FOMO.

The key factor, we thought, was emotion regulation – our ability to deal with our emotions. We know some people tend to be good at this, while others find it difficult. In fact, greater difficulties with emotion regulation was linked to experiencing greater acute stress related to COVID .

Read more: Why am I online? Research shows it's often about managing emotions

However, an idea that has been gaining attention recently is interpersonal emotion regulation . This means looking to others to help us regulate our emotions.

Interpersonal emotion regulation can be helpful (such as “ affective engagement ”, where someone might listen and talk about your feelings) or unhelpful (such as “ co-rumination ” or rehashing problems together), depending on the context.

In our analyses, we sought to uncover how both intrapersonal emotion regulation (ability to self-manage our own emotional states) and interpersonal emotion regulation (relying on others to help manage our emotions) accounted for the link between FOMO and problematic social media use, and FOMO and doomscrolling, respectively.

What we found – and what it might mean for the future of internet use

Our findings indicated that people who report stronger FOMO engage in problematic social media use because of difficulty regulating their emotions (intrapersonally), and they look to others for help (interpersonally).

Similarly, people who report stronger FOMO are drawn to doomscrolling because of difficulty regulating their emotions intrapersonally (within themselves). However, we found no link between FOMO and doomscrolling through interpersonal emotion regulation.

We suspect this difference may be due to doomscrolling being more of a solitary activity, occurring outside more social contexts that facilitate interpersonal regulation. For instance, there are probably fewer people with whom to share your emotions while staying up trawling through bad news.

While links between FOMO and doomscrolling have been observed before, our study is among the first to try and account for this theoretically.

We suspect the link between FOMO and doomscrolling may be more about having more of an online presence while things are happening . This would account for intrapersonal emotion regulation failing to help manage our reactions to “bad news” stories as they unfold, leading to doomscrolling.

Problematic social media use, on the other hand, involves a more complex interpersonal context. If someone is feeling the fear of being “left out” and has difficulty managing that feeling, they may be drawn to social media platforms in part to try and elicit help from others in their network.

Getting the balance right

Our findings suggest the current discussions around restricting social media use for young people , while controversial, are important. We need to balance our need for social connection – which is happening increasingly online – with the detrimental consequences associated with problematic internet use behaviours.

It is important to also consider the nature of social media platforms and how they have changed over time. For example, adolescent social media use patterns across various platforms are associated with different mental health and socialisation outcomes.

Public health policy experts and legislators have quite the challenge ahead of them here. Recent work has shown how loneliness is a contributing factor to all-cause mortality (death from any cause).

Read more: Doomscrolling is literally bad for your health. Here are 4 tips to help you stop

We have long known, too, that social connectedness is good for our mental health . In fact, last year, the World Health Organization established a Commission on Social Connection to help promote the importance of socialisation to our lives.

The recent controversy in the United States around the ownership of TikTok illustrates how central social media platforms are to our lives and ways of interacting with one another. We need to consider the rights of individuals to use them as they please, but understand that governments carry the responsibility of protecting users from harm and safeguarding their privacy.

If you feel concerned about problematic social media use or doomscrolling, you can speak to a healthcare or mental health professional. You can also call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or 13 YARN (13 92 76) to yarn with Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander crisis supporters.

• Social media
• Internet use
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• Social media use
• Fear of missing out
• doomscrolling
• New research, Australia New Zealand

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The Writing on the (Facebook) Wall: The Use of Social Networking Sites in Hiring Decisions

• Published: 04 May 2011
• Volume 26 , pages 219–225, ( 2011 )

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• E. Daly Vaughn 1  

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The popular media has reported an increase in the use of social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook by hiring managers and human resource professionals attempting to find more detailed information about job applicants. Within the peer-reviewed literature, cursory empirical evidence exists indicating that others’ judgments of characteristics or attributes of an individual based on information obtained from SNSs may be accurate. Although this predictor method provides a potentially promising source of applicant information on predictor constructs of interest, it is also fraught with potential limitations and legal challenges. The level of publicly available data obtainable by employers is highly unstandardized across applicants, as some applicants will choose not to use SNSs at all while those choosing to use SNSs customize the degree to which information they share is made public to those outside of their network. It is also unclear how decision makers are currently utilizing the available information. Potential discrimination may result through employer’s access to publicly available pictures, videos, biographical information, or other shared information that often allows easy identification of applicant membership to a protected class. For the practice to progress in a positive direction, evidence for the validity and job-relevance of information obtained from SNSs needs to be established. Organizational researchers and practitioners also need to promote awareness and attempt to create safeguards against the potential negative outcomes related to misuse of SNSs by employers.

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Brown, V.R., Vaughn, E.D. The Writing on the (Facebook) Wall: The Use of Social Networking Sites in Hiring Decisions. J Bus Psychol 26 , 219–225 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-011-9221-x

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