How Social Media Turns Us Into a Crowd

As technology has advanced and social media has become ubiquitous, more and more people spend a great deal of time on social media every day. As social creatures, humans tend to attach themselves to various groups. Social media, in turn, has become a medium that makes it easier for us to step into different groups — and that turns these groups into what psychology calls a "crowd". The formation of these crowds can also affect our own state of mind, drawing us thoroughly into being part of the throng.

In crowd psychology (Crowd Psychology), a "crowd" does not simply mean a mass of people gathered together; rather, it forms on the premise that this group of people are all simultaneously curious about and focused on a particular matter, and display the distinctive behaviour of that group. The internet and social media are flooded with information every day, so it is only natural for crowds to form around the same things that interest them. The formation of a crowd passes through three stages: submergence, contagion and suggestion (Le Bon, 1897).

Stage one: submergence

In the first stage (submergence), the anonymity of social media causes the individual to gradually lose self-awareness within the crowd. In a psychological crowd, no matter how greatly each individual's lifestyle, background and personality differ, once they acquire a kind of collective mind and realise they have become a group, their behaviour and conduct, along with their feelings and thoughts, also change from how they would be when they are alone on an ordinary day. When people gather because of some piece of trending news or some event, the opinions they voice or the emotions they express no longer represent their personal views; instead they become part of the mainstream opinion, or are classed as a minority view. As self-awareness fades, people begin to feel they no longer need to bear any responsibility for their own words, conduct and the emotions they express.

Stage two: contagion

In the second stage (contagion), the different individuals within the crowd begin to follow the mainstream opinions and emotions of the crowd, and those emotions are therefore amplified without cease. The convenience of social media also makes it easier for emotions to spread. For example, when something on social media becomes the focus of public attention and the mainstream emotion is anger, then, given social media's high exposure, this anger is amplified endlessly across the platforms. It infects more and more social media users who follow the matter and, before they know it, are drawn into this crowd, affecting their own emotions and behaviour.

This is precisely what is known as "digital emotional contagion" (Goldenberg & Gross, 2020). When you watch what other people are doing on social media, everything from the state of mind shared by those close to you to major national events can have some effect on your emotions. This emotional contagion also works through three different mechanisms, namely simple mimicry, category activation and social appraisal. On social media, simple mimicry is, for instance, when we copy the way others express their feelings, such as emojis. Category activation is when, on seeing certain emotion-laden words, you may activate some emotion belonging to the same emotional category. And social appraisal means that you believe your own emotional response should resemble that of other people in society, and so take the feelings of the wider public as your guide. These mechanisms cause your emotions to be manipulated without your realising it when you engage with social media, while you are at the same time infected by the emotions of others.

Stage three: suggestion

In the third stage (suggestion), the mind of every individual in the crowd has become completely subordinate to the collective mentality. People in a crowd are easily directed by suggestion; because the individuals within it have lost their self-awareness and are influenced by the emotions that have spread, they begin to display intense emotions, and these feelings are often lacking in reason and judgement. This also leads the crowd, for the most part, to be impulsive, irrational and prone to exaggerated emotion. On social media, packed as it is with all kinds of crowds, these crowd characteristics can be embodied all the more. Their behaviour is no longer governed by their own brains; instead, the stimuli they are subjected to determine what they do.

Taking a break from social media

All of this shows that the effect of prolonged exposure to social media on our emotions is far from trivial. To reduce the negative effects social media brings, we can give ourselves a little more "me time" and properly enjoy some time alone. So, when you feel yourself about to be submerged by all the intense emotions on social media, deactivating your social media account for a while is not a bad choice, letting yourself take a little rest from social media. Through social media we can indeed more easily keep in touch with others and know what is happening around us. But at the same time we also have to be mindful not to lose our self-awareness, and not to act unwisely under the sway of the crowd's intense emotions.

Reference:

Goldenberg, Amit, & Gross, James J. (2020). Digital Emotion Contagion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 24(4), 316-328. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364661320300279.

Hallett, T. (2003). Emotional Feedback and Amplification in Social Interaction. Sociological Quarterly, 44(4), 705-726.

Le Bon, G. (1897). The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. London, England: T. Fisher Unwin.