Everyone wants to be liked.

Humans have a natural need to feel they belong and to interact with each other, a UTA expert said. Upon this quality of human nature, social media has thrived and changed the way people connect on a daily basis.

Jarryd Willis, psychology graduate teaching assistant, said people’s need for social interaction is what drives them to strive for friends and followers on social media websites.

“You want to feel good about yourself, so you have more and more friends,” Willis said about the mind frame behind acquiring friends. “You feel like you’re more important, like everyone's looking at your life.”

Sociology professor Ben Agger said the problem is most Facebook friends are what he likes to call “weak ties.” For example, out of 1000 Facebook friends, probably about 970 of those people are who one might name, “Fake Friends,” which are people with whom one has only a casual connection.

Agger said recent research shows the number of really close friends Americans have has dropped in the last 10 or 15 years, from three to two. To explain the upsurge of interest in social media is to look closely at what people really want.

“A lot of people are searching for intimacy, friendship and community,” Agger said. “The Internet provides access.”

The problem is that with social networking, people substitute weak ties for strong ties, Agger said. Cultivating real friends on social networking sites can be done, but you’re bound to make stronger connections by getting out into the real world, he continued.

Economics junior Carl Musozya said he has about 300 friends on Facebook but really only considers about 25 of them close friends. He said he sees most of his real friends during the day, so he doesn’t have to be constantly logged into Facebook.

“I rarely keep up with any of them,” Musozya said about his Facebook friends. “We can be friends on Facebook. That doesn’t mean we’re friends in the real world.”

What also feeds into our social neediness, Agger said, is the "friending" process. Rejecting or ignoring a friend request on Facebook can increase one’s self esteem, Agger said. Agger said it’s having the opportunity to be selective that drives this notion.

“You want to have power over the people who friend you by turning some back,” he said.

Accounting senior Casie Matthews said she doesn’t add anyone she doesn’t know and hardly ever sends friend requests.

“I just wait for friend requests,” she said. “I never add anybody."

"I just don’t really have the time to search for anyone unless I see they are friends with someone else I know," said Matthews. "Then maybe, but very rarely.”

Human emotion aside, social media can be a useful tool for the future. Agger said social media has enabled political and social activism. Occupy Wall Street is the obvious American example of that, he said.

“We're using social media to further political and social causes,” he said. “There’s that aspect that one can view as relatively positive, and I think that’s here to stay.”

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