Chosen Article: Will Using Social Media Benefit or Harm Users’ Self-Esteem? It Depends on Perceived Relational-Closeness by Yang Han and Feng Yang

I chose this article to read because I have personally felt the effects of social media on my self-esteem. Both positively and negatively. It can make you feel incredible when the likes are coming in, and like you’re nothing when the likes are not. This goes for most social media. However, I found it interesting to note that the research in this article suggests social media with weak-relational closeness harmed users’ self-esteem, while social media with strong-relational closeness improved users’ self-esteem. The term relational-closeness in the context of this article, refers to how close users’ feel to other users. In the weak-relational closeness, the social media identified was TikTok as most users post for the public, and there are less opportunities for close one-to-one bonding. The strong relational closeness referred to the social media WeChat, which encourages users to develop and maintain close-knit connections to others.

It appears that strong-relational closeness, the perceived social support of other users’ contributed to mediating the positive contributions to self-esteem as opposed to it being all negative (Han & Yang, 2023). To me, this is important research as I have always found some social media more enjoyable than others. I grew up in the era of MSN, and although it was social media and a way for most teenagers of the early 2000’s to communicate, it felt more a bastion of social support we could not get at school. There may have been some negative consequences of cyber bullying for some, but msn was the kind of social media you could mediate quite effectively if problems were to occur. Now, social media like Facebook and Instagram are all-consuming, and not just a dozen members of your year. If something problematic arises on Facebook which affects your self-esteem, everyone you know in real life is seeing it as opposed to a handful. I think this is an important distinction relative to how social media has evolved and how strongly it effects our lives. We cannot escape using it, even for university or work purposes now.

The weak relational closeness of TikTok had a more profound negative impact on self-esteem (Han & Yang, 2023). It makes perfect sense to me as why. In TikTok, you are seeing what someone is making available for the public. People are far more likely to only post the best parts of their life, and thus giving users a perceived sense of ‘FOMO’ (Fear of missing out) about their own lives. In TikTok, unlike Instagram or Facebook, you do not know any of these people personally. Most of your interaction is with total strangers, instead of close friends, which also impacts how vulnerable your self-esteem could be.

This article made me consider how social media will keep evolving, and whether we will have some kind of boundaries in the future for it. As virtual reality continues, it could be assumed VR and social media will coincide, as Facebook (Meta) wishes. Will the relational closeness of VR social media be weak or strong? Will we feel more connected to others, or more disconnected and isolated? Time will tell.

Word count: 516.

Reference List

Han, Y., & Yang, F. (2023). Will Using Social Media Benefit or Harm Users’ Self-Esteem? It Depends on Perceived Relational-Closeness. Social Media + Society, 9(4), 20563051231203680. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231203680