Photo by: Matthew Henry – BURST
When using social media it’s really easy to express that you like something– quite literally you hit a “like” button. It might seem harmless, but A. Trevor Sutton writes in The Conversation, that is really not the case. Sutton writes, “[…] this one-click feature exists as an intentional design decision. […] design decisions are made not only to improve a users’ experience by also influence their behaviors.”
A study found, for example, that Twitter users in the U.S. often chose to ‘like’ something for bonding purposes rather than simply appreciating the content. Another study of Facebook users found that the ‘like’ button is used to maintain relationships with existing friends or to develop new relationships. The data also shows that the ‘like’ button is not harmless. One study found that impersonal gestures such as the one-click ‘like’ communication may not promote user well-being. Sutton adds, “A particularly harmful byproduct of the ‘like’ button is found in the way social networking sites foster negative social comparisons. [One study] found that the ‘like’ button works as a ‘mechanism to compare oneself with others.’ The number of ‘likes,’ makes social support quantifiable.”
