For my last English paper, we had to choose a topic from four choices of literature. The one I ended up with was "Social networking encourages Narcissism". I was able to find lots of information to support this theory, but I don't exactly agree. There are cases where social networking can bring good fortune to people; look at IJustine, FRED, and Ask A Ninja. But it can also bring about very bad consequences, such as the case of Jessie Slaughter VS Anonymous. What do you all think? And why?

Could you give us some more info on the theory and maybe some links to the cases you're talking about? And also maybe where your point of view diverges from the theory?

I don't think Facebook -> Narcissism. There was one study somewhere that said narcissists were more likely to post up more pictures of themselves though.

I was reading about this just the other day. The studies I was going through were saying that people who had hundreds of friends were narcissists. I guess I'll post a few for you guys to maybe get this debate going.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headline...book-activity/

Study of Facebook Users Connects Narcissism and Low Self-Esteem: Scientific American

Narcissism and Facebook - Forbes

They all pretty much say the same thing. "The more friends you have on facebook, combined with how often you update your status, says how narcissistic you are."

Have at it, peeps.

Upon reflecting on this topic, I hesitate to suggest that social media breeds narcissism. I think it's definitely an arena for people to more thoroughly express narcissism, in the same way that the printing press allowed the spread of literature. It didn't make writers better, it just made their works more accessible.

I agree with Keyori.

I'm not really interested in doing a lot of research on this topic to prove any points at this moment in time, but I can comment on the fact that I haven't had a friend do anything but passive-aggressively vent on facebook instead of talking to me in person ever since it came into existence. In a way, I think facebook makes people think that all those "likes" make their problems more important.

Slightly off topic, but I just hate how fb has created a place for people to complain, and get a kickback of support, but, at the same time, allows them to feel good without ever fixing their problems.

Kin-Akari, I will be more than happy to provide my sources of information. And thank you, ElysiumFate, for giving us some links to go off of whilst I was busy elsewhere. Since most of my findings were in an online database, I cannot provide links for all of them. But I'll provide the best in MLA formatted citations.

Andazola, Matt. "I ALMIGHTY ME: Fascination with celebrities, reality TV, MySpace are creating ?Narcissism Epidemic,' author says." America's Intelligence Wire. 11 Apr. 2010. General OneFile. Web. 16 Apr. 2012.

"Facebook Users With Lots of Friends More Likely To Be Narcissists; University of Georgia researchers analyzed Facebook users' pages to measure the relationship between an inflated sense of self-importance and the number of friends and wall posts on the social network." InformationWeek 23 Sept. 2008. General OneFile. Web. 17 Apr. 2012.

Kominicki, John. "Commentary: Social networking on the Internet: In the future, we'll all be famous for 140 characters." Long Island Business News. 26 Sept. 2008. General OneFile. Web. 16 Apr. 2012.

Pearse, Damien. “Facebook's 'dark side': study finds link to socially aggressive narcissism.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 17 Mar. 2012. Web. 17 Apr. 2012.
Facebook's 'dark side': study finds link to socially aggressive narcissism | Technology | guardian.co.uk

And slightly off topic comments are appreciated, you never know when one thing might link to another.
Just as social networking has several different consequences, a lot of those consequences are two sides of the same coin. Like your point, for instance: venting is good until it gets out of hand. Talking about your problems is fine until you start whining. If you went into a group of friends and talked like that, they'll eventually get tired of you and get you to quit or walk away. But on sites such as facebook, they check messages when they have time and are more than happy to comment on something- since time is no longer a constraint. It's in writing. It can be seen wherever and whenever.

I think that they do. I see so many people on a regular basis blogging about their appearance, posting semi naked or full nude pictures. Yes, you don't hate your body, but why do you need to feel the need to post about it in that way?
I doubt that most of those people would get on their kit off in the middle of a town, and that it's the lack of close contact with a lot of people on the internet that makes it relatively easy to propagate narcissism of that vein. I think things like 'outfit posts' which occasionally frequent my Tumblr dashboard have no other purpose that to collect positive comments and feed ones ego. Rarely do they ever ask the opinion of whether something suits them, which i feel more genuine a post to make, but they seem to have already decided they look fantastic, and just aim to curry the attention of others.

Similarly with Facebook, the amount of people that moan about their own appearance. I know this happens frequently outside of social networks, but i think they encourage people to pander to them significantly more than direct person to person interactions. Tagging themselves in their own uploaded photos. Why do that really? You can view them as you want, what's the point in tagging yourself on top of that? I feel it's a tad narcissistic.

On the other hand it might just encourage something that's inherent in a certain type of person, made easier with access to such sites. I don't know many people that act quite as narcissistic in real life as they do online.

It can encourage, no doubt, if that is the simple question. Whether or not networking is good, a thousand times it is good.

Originally Posted by Kriemedesan

It can encourage, no doubt, if that is the simple question. Whether or not networking is good, a thousand times it is good.

Why specifically would you call it good?

Anything that is monopolized or even kept within small, exclusive group, like mainstream media, is a bad thing. In this case, it would control the information flow. For instance, there has been a long debate on certain writings. One group says that the oldest is correct and the other says that the one that has the most documents agreeing with it from the periods in which it was written is correct. The first said later ones are missing parts from the test of time, and the second says that the first has been tampered with and only survived because everyone knew and refused to use it, wear and tear and all that, which was true; it was found in a trashcan. They also pointed out that you can edit one thing, but there was no way to edit all of these things, which was their reason for wanting the latter option. Now, this was debated for a long while and, what do you know, an even older writing was found and, rather than agreeing most with the other oldest writings, it agreed more with the one in majority.

I admit, there is always going to be historical doubtism and lies, until the last day, but, from the perspective of a historian and any free-marketeer, it is better to leave such things in the hands of the people. (I realize this is really an extreme versus the babbling of people taking pictures of their lunchmeat and saying, "Guess what I'm having!" but the good far outweighs the pettiness.)

I think Narcissism shouldn't be seen as something you can simply stamp on someone who uses social media a lot. I think if you have a lot of social contacts, social media is great! It's the perfect way to communicate and stay in touch with people whenever you want, mankind was a social animal anyway.

I'm not sure... I mean I've been narcisstic before I even knew what social networking was. If anything Social Networks have lowered my narcissim, because now I'm bored with everyone looking at me all the time.

Originally Posted by Codette

I'm not sure... I mean I've been narcisstic before I even knew what social networking was. If anything Social Networks have lowered my narcissim, because now I'm bored with everyone looking at me all the time.

Now THAT is a perspective I never would've thought of.