How Do We React When We’re Excluded on Social Media?



MART PRODUCTION courtesy Pexels

Source: MART PRODUCTION courtesy Pexels

Social media platforms like X (formerly known as Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Reddit allow people to connect with a potentially very large number of people. A single post may be seen by dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people.

However, this also creates a situation where you could end up feeling left out by dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people when you don’t get the feedback you’d hoped for your latest post. Not surprisingly, people tend to feel socially excluded when they don’t get enough likes on social media. So how do people respond to this kind of social exclusion? Do people respond by reaching out to others, or by withdrawing from social media? New research by Christoph Kenntemich and colleagues just published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, explored these reactions.

How Might People Respond to Social Exclusion Online?

Kennetemich and colleagues proposed that being excluded on social media by not receiving many likes, reposts, or comments could cause users to engage in three different response patterns:

  1. Reconnection with Many: When people are socially excluded, they are likely to feel unseen. Therefore, social exclusion may create a desire, not necessarily to be liked by others, but to be acknowledged. This desire to reconnect with many should make people even more likely to post after a particularly unpopular post, in order to get the acknowledgement they crave.
  2. Reconnection with Specific Individuals: Another possibility is that social exclusion may increase our desire to reconnect on a personal level with specific individuals. If that is the case, then after a particularly unpopular post, users should look for ways to interact with specific individuals, such as commenting on their posts or retweeting (sharing) their post. This would be likely to garner a response from that specific person, creating an increased sense of connection.
  3. Social Withdrawal: One response to being socially excluded is to withdraw from further social interaction to shield yourself from the risk of it happening again. This response is especially easy to do on social media, as opposed to walking out of a meeting or party when feeling excluded.

The Data

In two studies, the researchers examined users’ behavior on Twitter (as it was known at the time of data collection) and Reddit. First, they determined the relative popularity of each post a person made. That is, was a post particularly popular (e.g., a lot of likes) or particularly unpopular (e.g., few likes) compared to that person’s typical post.

In order to determine how users responded to the reactions to their posts, they examined how long it took the user to post again either to the wider network or to comment on someone else’s post. If users are faster to post in response to one type of experience than another that suggests that they were motivated to make that kind of post. For example, if after having a particularly unpopular post, the user posts again especially quickly, that suggests that the unpopular post motivated them to quicker action.

What They Found

In both studies, the researchers found strong support for the hypothesis that social exclusion would lead users to try to connect with many. After making a particularly unpopular post, users tended to be quicker to publicly post again. For activities that would help them to connect to specific others, such as commenting on others’ posts, they were actually slower to perform those activities after a particularly unpopular post. That is, people were less inclined to try to connect with specific others after having experienced social exclusion. There also no evidence that users tried to socially withdrawal after these negative experiences.

Their results also showed that users who tended to be very frequent posters were less affected by having an especially unpopular post. Perhaps those who post frequently are more accustomed to the ups and downs one can experience on social media, so they aren’t as affected by how any one particular post performs. It might also be the case that people who are less affected by how their posts are received by others are more comfortable posting frequently.

In Sum

Being excluded on social media, by not receiving as much attention for our posts as we’d hoped, can be an upsetting experience. The post common response to these experiences is to re-engage and make another attempt to connect with our followers or friends with a new post, rather than seeking to connect with specific person or to take a break from social media activity.


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