People create content for a vast number of reasons but I’d say the biggest would be for attention. As social media continues to expand, so will the amount of people trying to do anything in order to become famous. The rise of social media platforms such as Snapchat and Tiktok have allowed for a countless amount of trends and challenges to be performed and uploaded by various “influencers” as well as the average consumer. All of this drives the cycle of attention seeking and the endless social media race for “clout”. Other reasons include for a long term documentation of their lives, sharing with family and friends, and for expression.
The long term documentation of people’s lives and sharing with family and friends, are to some extent interchangeable as the intentions behind them are very similar if not the same. Connection and a desire to be remembered are two reasons which I strongly believe play a role in people’s creation of online content. Sharing with family and friends builds up the previously mentioned desire for connection and to be remembered. Even after death, pictures of you posted on social media accounts will remain, and this perhaps eternally honors your request to be remembered. However, expression of the self is a driving force behind the creation of online content which I find all the more interesting and variable. To me, the process of creating the content and sharing it with others is a form of art. Different people post different things that they resonate with and find meaningful. In the article “Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet- and Keep Google Out” we see the importance of how Google’s algorithm has affected the content we consume, as well as the interactions we have with those around us. As a result, I have begun to see the algorithm as another significant reason that drives people to post and follow the content they do. The algorithm in a sense is self sufficient as it provides people with content and in return people also feed it content that helps it to evolve. The creating and sharing of content has also become easier as explained in the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr. The harnessing of the internet, its algorithms, and all its data resources has drastically contributed to the massive and rapid development of all these social media platforms in which millions of people create and share content.
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