Friends or Followers?

 Friends or Followers?

When we visit our social media apps like instagram, twitter, and facebook, do we refer to our followers as "friends" or just "followers?" Are your followers on these social media apps just followers or do you consider all the people that follow you your friends? These are the questions I ask to get your attention on what followers actually mean in social media apps. Think about it, how many people who follow you actually know you. For example, when a celebrity has over 100 million followers on instagram, they only personally know less than 1% of those followers, staggering. Having this many followers on a social media platform doesn't mean that these people have that many friends. Friends and relationships come from a simply form of interaction through face to face intervals through communication. 

How Does this work?

Well, surprise! As of 2021, over 82% of the Untied States population uses social media on a daily basis. That means of that 82%, everyone has made some kind of connection through social media. Having followers throughout these social media platforms has created some good things and some bad things for all of social media users in the United States. As Shannon Correia states, "There is a distinction that separates the two, which comes down to a basic principle: Facebook friends are those you know personally, while those you follow are people of interest to you, though they're outside your circle of real-life relations." With that being said, the moral self brings out the true kind of friend you are in a real life relation while having followers is following the people you know or just enjoy to know about. You may not know much about a celebrity figure like let's say, Lebron James, but the thing you know and why you follow him is because of him being a great basketball player. This is the case for most people you follow. Let's think, if you have 1,000 followers on instagram, realistically, how many do you actually know and have a relationship outside the phone in real life. This number could be different for everyone of us normal people who use instagram, but let's just say of those 1,000 followers you have, you only know 250 of them. That means that over 70% of the rest of those followers are people you really don't have any relationship with. Would you hang out with them outside of the phone or are they people just you talk to over the social media app?

All We Need Is Followers

If you have more followers does that make you on more of a pedestal in the world of social media and society? Combines these two thoughts together, do followers make you a better person in a real world setting? We live in a world where social media has taken over people's lives. I can tell you a personally story that I learned in my first year of college in 2017. There was girl that I graduated high school with and one of my good friends growing up. She went to school down in Southern California and she blew up on Instagram in her first month of college with followers after she posted a picture of her in a bikini at the beach. She went from 2,000 followers to 50,000 in a week after this picture was posted. Later to find out that she would buy followers by dming people to post her picture on their account "for clout." Today, she has over 600 thousand followers, dropped out of college, and is consider an "instagram model." This is one of those things that everyone has their own opinion on, but the truth is men and women buy their followers throughout social media apps because it makes them cooler. Although these people have zero personal relationships with any of these followers, they are considered to be "famous" in our society because of their followers. Followers are just people who like your feed and dm you weird things.

Society

In today's world, we all know social media is here and it really isn't going anywhere, we are stuck with it, for all the good and bad it brings. So, I just want to say that whether or not you think friends and followers are the same thing, we can all agree that having personal relationships are stronger than one's over a social media platform. Followers can create longtime relationships that last a lifetime for the good, but also for the bad. For some, followers and likes are everything to their lives, and having these followers can create bigger brands and money in social media. What I want everyone to take from this is that stronger relationships are still found through face to face interactions. Someone who may seem happy on social media with tons of followers may not be happy in their personal life, and as a follower, we don't know that unless we know them personally. 

Keep on scrolling through, following, and liking, but don't let your life take you over because of followers, remember that personal relationships are strong.