According to a new research carried out at the University of Buffalo in the USA, Social media platforms operate with a certain peculiarity which often presents users with social exclusion information which may inhibit intelligent thoughts among its users.

The study shows that the unintended social exclusion on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites may have   short term ill-effects on the users.  A single post on Facebook could lead to an influx of negative emotions from the people who read them, and may affect the thought processes in ways that make users more susceptible to advertising messages.

The aspect of social exclusion present in the social media posts is purely unintentional.  Your social media friends don’t intentionally post social exclusion information with the intentions of hurting you. However, most of the social networking sites people use push information to users about their networks – as they are designed to do, whose interpretation can have significant consequences.

On a daily basis, people use networking sites such as Facebook. Many at times the users open their pages, not with the intention of communicating directly to a person, but rather to see online exchanges among friends which unintentionally excluded them. The messages from friends which don’t include them can be interpreted in a way that makes people feel left out, consequently making them feel bad. As innoxious as these feelings may seem, they are not easily dismissed.

Any element of social exclusion, no matter how trivial, is one of the most powerful sanctions people can use on others. It can evoke various physical and psychological effects such as reduced complex cognitive thought.

Wondering how? Well, psychologists say that experiencing the negative emotions prompts the self-regulating function of our Brains. Self-regulating acts to help people quickly moderate the negative emotions which can result from negative interpretation of social media posts. It also however has a downside to it. Self-regulation also consumes mental resources that inhibit intelligent thought in a person.

When users are constantly self-regulating because of what they read on social media, there’s evidence that doing so reduces their level of intelligent thought. Such users have a tendency to devote more mental resources toward understanding their social networks. This makes them particularly sensitive and more open to persuasive messages such online Advertisements.

Social media platforms like Facebook understand this and fully utilize it for profit. It’s probably the reason why the Facebook Annual Ads revenue has been skyrocketing over the last few years. They have been minting money by taking advantage of the short-term inhibition of intelligent thought brought about by social exclusion from the benign and common use of the platform.

As much as we continue to use these social networking sites for our daily endeavors, we shouldn’t give so much emphasis on the social media exclusion information inundated on us. Some of them may not always have our best interests at heart, to them, it’s just business.

Comments

comments