Digital Narcissism
Nowadays, with the increasing use of the Internet and therefore social networks, it has become much more common for people to communicate with each other. Creating a communication network not only with people you know, but also with people you don't know has created concepts such as social media phenomenality, social media likeability. Social media platforms that enable narcissistic people to show themselves more easily have created a need to research how narcissistic attitudes are affected in digital environments. Narcissistic is defined in psychology as placing a lot of importance on putting oneself at the forefront, taking egocentrism as a basis, having less empathy with other people. Narcissism is a personality disorder, and with the right treatment methods, a person can be prevented from harming him/herself and his environment. At the same time, it is also possible for a person to harm him/herself and his/her environment with wrong decisions on digital platforms. It is important to get professional support.
The Deciency Between Narcissism and Facebook, TwitterUsage
Social media provides an opportunity for narcissists torecreate themselves (self-regulation). Narcissistic people whoact with the motivation of being liked, accepted and have lessempathy; who are less likely to be in long-term, closerelationships, are more inclined to project themselves as someone they are not on social media platforms to increasetheir likeability. Facebook and Twitter There is a research on whether narcissistic behavior varies according to age betweenFacebook and Twitter. Dec. According to this study, narcissistic college students use Twitter more to reflect theirnarcissistic motives, while narcissistic adults use Facebook more. In addition, the connection of time spent on the siteswith age and narcissism has also been established. Althoughnarcissistic university students prefer Twitter more to reflecttheir narcissistic motives, they spend more time on Facebook than narcissistic adults. To reflect their own narcissisticmotives, they use themselves to collect information rather thanshare it. There is no Decoupling between narcissism and time spent on Twitter. Because, as another study suggests, Twittercan also be used only for information collection purposes.
Facebook and Twitter Decouple Another reason for thedifference between Facebook and Twitter is that peoplecommunicate more with their friends on Facebook, whilepeople on Twitter can gain a more general audience that theydon't know as followers. Therefore, in this study, it was foundthat Twitter meets the popularity motive of narcissism more. As the popularity of the narcissistic person on the social mediaplatform increases, the state of being positive also increases, but the decline in popularity has the opposite effect. Since an increase in popularity will increase the narcissistic person'ssense of social acceptance, the person's satisfaction level willalso increase due to this. Since a decrease in popularity willthreaten the narcissistic person's ego with social rejection, theperson feels in danger and the negative mood state increases.
The Decoupling Between Narcissism and Instagram Use
It is observed that people who outweigh narcissisticcharacteristics are more active on social media platformscompared to others. Instagram, on the other hand, is the mostwidely used social media platform today, which makes it theeasiest to exhibit a person's self among these platformsthrough photos and videos.Dec. A study conducted by JangHo Moon et al. found that narcissistic people share their ownphotos on Instagram more, change their profile photos moreoften, and pay more attention to attractiveness in these photos. Although it was found in this study that narcissism waspositively related to the time spent on Instagram and thefrequency of changing profile photos, no valid relationshipwas found between the number of followers, the number of followers and the frequency of sharing photos. Dec.
Another study conducted by Patrick Sheldon found that one of the reasons why narcissistic people like or comment on photosof friends may be the reason for increasing their visibility andtherefore popularity by the people who own the photo.
The Connection of Social Media Usage Time withNarcissism
Narcissistic people spend more time on social media toolsthan people who are less narcissistic and use them more toshow themselves and prove themselves. It is also a subject of research whether social media increases the narcissism of a person who was not a narcissist before using social media.
Narcissism and the Neurological Dimension of SocialMedia Use
If the effect of social media on narcissistic attitudes is considered from a neurological point of view, the prefrontalcortex perceives feedback such as likes, comments as compliments, compliments, rewards. Therefore, the reward-seeking movement takes place. Some hormones are alsosecreted according to the nature of the feedback. For example, dopamine is secreted in positive feedback, while GABA, which also plays a role in anxiety, is secreted in negativefeedback. Negative feedback threatens the ego of thenarcissistic individual and creates a fear of social rejection.
REFERENCES:
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Jabeen F, Gerritsen C, Treur J. Narcissism and fame: a complex network model for the adaptive interaction of digitalnarcissism and online popularity. Network Science (2020) 5:84.
James C, Davis K, Charmaraman L, Konrath S, Slovak P, Weinstein E, Yarosh L. Digital life and youth well-being, social connectedness, empathy, and narcissism. PediatricsVolume 140, number S2, November 2017:e20161758.
Moon JH, Lee E, Lee JA, Choi TR, Sung Y. The role of narcissism in self-promotion on instagram. Elsevier, Personality and Individual Differences 101 (2016) 22–25.
Panek ET, Nardis Y, Konrath S. Mirror or Megaphone?: How relationships between narcissism and social networking site use differ on Facebook and Twitter. Elsevier, Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 2004–2012.
Sheldon P. (2015). In Self-monitoring and narcissism aspredictors of sharing Facebook photographs. Presented at thesouthern states communication association conference, Tampa, FL.
Sheldon P, Bryant K. Instagram: motives for its use andrelationship to narcissism and contextual age. Elsevier, Computers in Human Behavior 58 (2016) 89e97.
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