How Does Facebook Balance Individuality and Conformity?

The virtual community that I participate the most in is Facebook. Because of its popularity, the plethora of users bring massive amounts of diversity to the virtual community. I feel that it balances individuality and conformity very well as it allows the user to stay within their own small group of friends as well as it gives the user the opportunity to join many groups of specified interests where they can feel less individualistic and feel more conforming to the norm of that group. A person first brings to the community their own unique traits and ideas.

Facebook utilizes the fact that people want to feel special and distinctive. Therefore they allow their users to decorate their allotted virtual space in almost anyway they choose. The users are able to personalize their space by decorating it with stickers and quotes and other various information about themselves. For instance, they can choose to identify with a sexual orientation to set themselves apart from those who do not share the same orientation. By sharing certain information, one is defining how others view them and in a sense projects individualism. Projected individualism needs to be protected in such a large and group orientated environment therefore Facebook gives the option to change the restriction of the security settings. Users are able to change privacy settings in which they choose who can or cannot view their personal information. This security of privacy helps protect individualism while the user is participating and becoming apart of the Facebook community.


On Facebook, there are a myriad of groups one can choose to join. In fact, one person can be apart of many groups; the number of groups are not restricted. There are groups, such as the Gay Pride group that posts pictures from all over the world from various gay festivals, gay couples sticking up for their rights, and or anything pertaining to the LBGT community. This expression and openness of a group accumulates incidents from all over and puts then into one place on the web where members and even others can feel apart of the events. They can feel apart of the effort and struggle for gay rights and or they can simply support the members and spread information to others to promote awareness. Awareness helps to educate people about certain events and troubles in the world, in this case, how most states in America have not legalized gay marriage. Hopefully, if more people become aware and comfortable with the gay community, gay people will be able to enjoy and benefit from the equal opportunity to marry the person that they love.


Overall, the most beneficial and efficient community is one that can bring a person into a group of others and still allow that person to retain the characteristics that make that person an individual. From my experience in participating on Facebook, I believe that it is a well-constructed virtual community that fits the requirements of an efficient community as it allows me the ability to become involved and follow convention while at the same time giving me tools to preserve my individualism.