This research essay is written by one of my grade 11 students. The essay presents three well-researched reasons as to why women tend to use social media more often than men do. The essay follows the rules of a standard five-paragraph essay, which is an acceptable format for high school. There is a clear thesis statement with three subtopics, each body paragraph starts with a clear topic sentence, and clear transitions are applied effectively to join the paragraphs together. Finally, the writer has quoted various sources in support of the points made in the essay.
Women on Social Media
Facebook, one of the world’s largest social media companies, started in 2004 and only had 5.5 million users at the time, and now over the course of just 12 years, it has over 1.79 billion users worldwide. 76% of the female population over the age of 12 uses Facebook compared to only 66% of the male population of the same age range (Vermeren, 2016). The same trend can be seen in other social media sites, where women are more dominant than men. Women tend to use social media more than men because they are relatively more appearance-conscious, competitive, and social.
Women, who tend to be more conscious of their appearance, outnumber men in using social media, a place where they can easily modify their appearance. Photo editors give people the ability to modify their display in a way that surpasses beauty products and makeup through intensifying shadows, popping colours, drastic contrasts, and blemishing effects. These stunning effects are now made possible. It is no longer necessary to put effort into looking good before photos, nor is there a need to position lighting for optimal brightness (McGrath, 2016). Photo editors allow simple and easy photo editing, and what could possibly be more attractive to women than easily obtaining the best look possible? 58% of the users on Instagram, one of the most popular social media platforms, now with over 500 million users, are women, according to The Atlantic (Seligson, 2016). Being heavily based on photo sharing, Instagram is a magnet for fashion, design, and beauty products targeting women and their interest in appearance. The percentage of female users on other popular social media sites, such as Facebook and Pinterest, shows a similar pattern. Even if a platform does not provide photo editing features, there are separate photo editing apps that users can download to edit any photo anytime. These photos can be then posted on Facebook or Pinterest with glamorous lighting and intense shadows, making anyone look good (Vermeren, 2016). The creation of filters and easy modification of appearance is one of the reasons why more women use social media than men.
Apart from giving women the chance to present themselves differently, social media also makes it easier for women to compete for popularity and attention. All the amazing photos that their friends post, consisting of the best moments of their lives, according to Julie Spira, author of The Rules of Netiquette, make women feel the pressure to become better than others, constantly counting the number of likes and comments they receive and refreshing the page over and over (Spira, 2016). According to Hannah Seligson, “[e]veryone wants to be the most beautiful girl in the room. Instagram provides a platform where you can enter that competition every day” (Selgison, 2016, para. 9). Like Instagram, other forms of social media, including Facebook and Twitter, provide such an opportunity for competition. Competing with others on social media is essentially comparing one’s life to a never-ending magazine. According to The Atlantic, women tend to feel more of the pressure than men for feeling beautiful, fit, popular, intelligent and accomplished without any visible effort to put forth (Selgison, 2016). The usage of social media also creates a chemical reaction within users, a chemical called dopamine. Dopamine is a “reward molecule” released after people work out or after certain goals are achieved. According to a news report by Soat (2015), a study of Australian consumers conducted by RadiumOne, social media usage is a dopamine gold mine. “Every time we post, share, ‘like,’ comment or send an invitation online, we are creating an expectation” and “we feel a sense of belonging and advance our concept of self through sharing” (Soat, 2015, para. 2). With 76% of the female population using social media and having almost twice as many posts as men do, according to Brandwatch (Vermeren, 2015), it is evident they feel more pressure to compete and win than men do.
Another reason why women use more social media than men is that women are more social and like to connect with others on a global scale. According to Iris Vermeren, a community manager on Brandwatch, there are 69% of women who like to connect with friends through social media, whereas only 54% of men would like to connect (Vermeren 2015). According to a study of 1000 brain scans conducted by Fit Brains Rosetta Stone, the brains of men and women are biologically different from each other. The research shows female brains are highly connected across the left and right hemispheres, while connections in male brains are stronger between the front and back regions. Men are more logical thinkers, while women are more emotionally oriented. This is why women are better at social thinking and interactions than men, while men are more abstract and task-orientated. As such, women are normally more social while men more often prefer relying on themselves to get things done (Niu, 2014). This is why a lot of women tend to use social media because it allows them to connect with others worldwide (Niel, 2010). Therefore, women, who are much more social than men because of the structure and nature of their brains, tend to use social media more often.
Women tend to use social media more than men because of how easy it is to modify their appearances through filters with the touch of a finger, how much they like to compete with each other for likes and compliments, and how they biologically like connecting with others on a global scale. In general, women tend to spend more time on major social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram than men do.