Watch out for social fakes
“DON’T be gullible. Social media can be very dangerous in the wrong hands.”
This is a warning from SA’s Got Talent finalist Jesse Govender, after a man used his social media pictures to create a fake profile in order to meet girls.
Govender, 18, who has been dating Priyal Harrichurran for the past two years, said he was speechless when he got a message on Facebook from a girl claiming that they were in a relationship.
“I found out that the person she was actually in a relationship with was a man by the name of Calvin. His profile picture had a collage of my pictures and her pictures.”
The girl’s cousin raised the alarm when she saw the pictures as she recognised Govender from the talent show.
“The girl told me she had been in a relationship with the man for two months. They had never met, just chatted on WhatsApp.”
Govender got his number and confronted him on WhatsApp. “He admitted to stealing my pictures off Instagram and using them to create profiles in order to get girls.”
The man has apologised and Govender said he would not be taking legal action.
IN THE age of internet and smartphones, there is no denying that technology continuously shapes our everyday lives. People today are more connected than ever and social media in particular has transformed human interactions well beyond the confines of our immediate circles. We can communicate with friends, family and likeminded communities regardless of physical location, and sharing even the most intimate aspects of our private lives has become the norm.
We believe that every cinnamon latte we consume is extraordinary and meaningful to others. We share every thought and feeling, imagining the world as our doting mother, celebrating every itch we scratch.
And yet, despite our sense of self-importance, we have lost touch with an internally generated sense of self-worth or meaning.
In order to understand the relationship between social media and self-image, we need to recognise what draws us to online networks in the first place.
The obvious advantage would be to keep in touch with distant friends and relatives. Yet, our fascination with social media runs deeper than that; it taps into our desire to be heard.
As a psychologist, what I hear most often is “nobody listens to me”. With all these “friends” and followers, you have automatic listeners.
One can simply do things and experience things on social media that they cannot do elsewhere. One can now make their most private and personal thoughts instantly and globally public whilst sitting alone at home.
In addition, a user has power to completely control the parts they want to broadcast on the public forum; often presenting idealised versions of their lives.
Although it seems people are happy and living it up via their posts on social media, it could represent only a small portion of their life.
According to the self discrepancy theory, people identify with three different types of self: the actual self – the person we perceive ourselves to actually be; the ought self based on who we believe we should be; and the ideal self – the person we want to be. The larger the discrepancy between the actual and the ideal self, the more prone the individual is to feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem.
Bombarded with constant reminders of other people’s lives are “pefect”, it can be difficult to see through the illusion that everyone is flying higher, having more fun, and going to better places.
Fear of missing out
The question remains then, if social media makes us feel so bad, why do we continue to take part?
Fear of missing out undoubtedly plays a major role as online networks have become so important in daily interaction with our peers. Another factor is our inherent need to be regarded positively by others.
Posting pictures online and receiving “likes” and comments is one of the most instant and measurable forms of external validation.
Social media has made it easy to choose the path of instant, short-term gratification, with the ideal or online self often taking precedence over the actual self.
The more congruent we perceive the two selves to be, the greater our sense of fulfilment.
The growth of social media has brought with it some strange modern phenomena. One of the most recent ones is the viral online challenge. These are often harmless, generally silly dares that people get drawn into doing with the influence of the internet.
Although some are fun and harmless, others have caused injury and even death – the “deadpose” challenge, the “duct tape” challenge, the “cinnamon” challenge and the “choking” challenge, to name a few.
On first seeing these pictures, you might think it’s just attention-seeking posts. But once you see a few more similar posts, you might start to think there’s something going on and you’re not in on it. Novelty piques a persons’ interest; viral spread through social media gives the content an air of importance.
The sharing and liking of these posts indirectly supports the social media challenge trend and encourages others to make more of these kinds of posts, getting more provocative and risky with each new challenge.
When people share a post with friends or discuss it online, fitting in and the need to belong may outweigh any perceived risks.
Everyone has the need to belong to some extent, but some people feel this need to be accepted more strongly than others.
Social media enables people to share videos and pictures of them performing dares to a greater audience, upping the thrill factor and potential for gaining respect, likes and followers, making it even more tempting to get involved.
The bottom line is that the objective of any social media trend, even the well-meaning ones, is to get as many hits as possible; thereby reinforcing the sense of self.
Social media has its place just like anything else. It can be perfectly healthy to have a social media presence, but not one that requires constant involvement and bases social value and acceptance on how many likes and followers they have.
Social media can definitely help the need to belong, but over relying on it as a gauge of liking and acceptance can ultimately be harmful.
Rizwana Ahmed is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Durban SOCIAL media trends have surely shifted from just owning a Facebook account, to owning multiple accounts and integrating them, and has become a standard, integral part of the marketing mix.
So says Timothy Padayachee, a digital content management specialist at Jozi Social Media.
“Things like #Deadpose is not advised and quite frankly is Satanic,” he said.
“Trends are a general direction in which something is developing or changing. People create something that will get your attention and then we naturally want to keep up with the Joneses and better the last post.”
He said some would go to extremes turning this into psychological issues.
“Anything, like a song, a store, a website, or even just a video can become popular trends around the world.”
Padayachee said these could spread like wildfire to all platforms and get anyone’s attention.
“Social media has transformed society. Needless to say, social media has forever changed the way society works, whether it’s the sharing of an idea, the communication of news, or the availability of a product or service. Society today is on the verge of a new way of existing that it’s never experienced before. “
TIPS
“Use caution when you click links that you receive in messages from your friends on your social website. Treat links in messages on these sites as you would links in e-mail messages.