A strange thing happened to me this week.

I was delivering a workshop on motivation and communication skills for a school. A couple of the things I spoke  about was Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the path to self-actualisation. I also spoke about the Facebook Friends Wheel application. I was using it as a metaphor for personal and professional relationship webs, to highlight the importance of developing a strong set of relationships in and out of the workplace. During one of the discussions, someone made the point that they didn’t “get” Facebook or MySpace or any social networking and could I help them see the value in it. A couple of others murmured agreement and so I tried to explain why it’s so popular – communication, common values, instant feedback, etc. Although they understood it, they still didn’t “get” it. They weren’t being rude or obstructive or anything. In fact I think that they actually wanted to “get” it, but couldn’t.

In the ensuing discussion, someone started to draw parallels between Maslow esteem/relationship phase and the need for personal affirmation. Maybe this was why many younger people found Facebook so powerful – it met their need for the respect of others.  When I asked this person where she found herself on the hierarchy, she indicated she was pretty close to self-actualisation and her needs insofar as respect from others was concerned were being met both personally and professionally.



I used this information in another session at another school the next day. I lined the teachers up by age and asked all  those with Facebook accounts to put their hands up. As I expected, Facebook accounts were held by mostly younger teachers. I then asked them to think about Maslow’s Hierarchy and where they stood. Almost all of the Facebookers were operating at either the Love/Belonging or Esteem phases.

I just wondered if that may be one of the reasons that Social Networking is so popular.

J

Image ref : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow