Rethinking Social Media Usage
Text: Kwok Jia-Xin
In 2009, American scholar William Deresiewicz wrote an article titled “Faux Friendship,” lamenting how Facebook was ruining the notion of friendship by encouraging people to broadcast their thoughts publicly.
“The most disturbing thing about Facebook is the extent to which people are willing – are eager – to conduct their private lives in public,” he wrote. “Now we're just broadcasting our stream of consciousness to all 500 of our friends at once, hoping that someone, anyone, will confirm our existence by answering back.”
Fast forward a few years and we find similar trends about how Facebook updates can make one appear “insufferable” or how “humblebragging” – boasting disguised in the form of self-deprecation – makes one insincere.
Although they may seem light-hearted, such trends are symptomatic of a greater problem – a lack of social media literacy. Social media platforms are a ubiquitous part of our lives, but it seems that most users are unaware that communication on social media is different from face-to-face communication. In other words, we cannot behave on Facebook – where we broadcast to hundreds of friends – the same way we behave offline.
The consequences can be graver than being labelled as “insufferable.” In September, Raffles Institution student Ernest Low published a blog post titled “The Ugly Truth About Neighbourhood Schools,” which contained generalisations such as “it is an ugly fact that neighbourhood schools can never become ‘good’ schools.” Although the post was written without ill intention, the article went viral and Low was castigated by readers.
A possible explanation for Low’s decision to publish his post could be explained by behavioural economist George Loewenstein’s research on people’s “paradoxical attitudes toward privacy,” or how online self-disclosure depends on the context. According to Loewenstein, “the cues that we rely on through culture and evolution to tell us there is a privacy issue are not present on the Internet.” In other words, the Internet, as a medium, muddles our perception of privacy. Users might indiscriminately post content without realising that it can be easily taken out of context and interpreted wrongly.
As such, we need to regulate our behaviour on social media, and think twice before posting content because online communication is not limited to the confines of our real-life social circles. Furthermore, with employers today checking prospective employees’ social network profiles, there is greater need for us to manage our social media presence.
A good way to start is to be more aware of the functions of social media sites. For example, tweaking the oft-neglected privacy settings on such sites prevents unwanted parties from viewing content meant only for a select few. When posting content, one can also use certain privacy functions that limit the number of people who can see it.
Such actions might resemble self-censorship. On social media, users should have the right to express their views and share what they want without fear of reprisal. However, the reality is that our lives are no longer private on social media. We must be aware that what we publish online can be seen by an audience wider than intended, and thus greater discretion is required in posting.
In addition, by limiting online communication to the people we really want to talk to, we might actually build intimacy. In his article, Deresiewicz also wrote “the value of friendship lies precisely in the space of privacy it creates: not the secrets that two people exchange so much as the unique and inviolate world they build up between them, the spider web of shared discovery they spin out, slowly and carefully, together.”
We have to rethink the way we use social media, but that might not be such a bad thing after all.
Tags: commentary/editorial
In 2009, American scholar William Deresiewicz wrote an article titled “Faux Friendship,” lamenting how Facebook was ruining the notion of friendship by encouraging people to broadcast their thoughts publicly.
“The most disturbing thing about Facebook is the extent to which people are willing – are eager – to conduct their private lives in public,” he wrote. “Now we're just broadcasting our stream of consciousness to all 500 of our friends at once, hoping that someone, anyone, will confirm our existence by answering back.”
Fast forward a few years and we find similar trends about how Facebook updates can make one appear “insufferable” or how “humblebragging” – boasting disguised in the form of self-deprecation – makes one insincere.
Although they may seem light-hearted, such trends are symptomatic of a greater problem – a lack of social media literacy. Social media platforms are a ubiquitous part of our lives, but it seems that most users are unaware that communication on social media is different from face-to-face communication. In other words, we cannot behave on Facebook – where we broadcast to hundreds of friends – the same way we behave offline.
The consequences can be graver than being labelled as “insufferable.” In September, Raffles Institution student Ernest Low published a blog post titled “The Ugly Truth About Neighbourhood Schools,” which contained generalisations such as “it is an ugly fact that neighbourhood schools can never become ‘good’ schools.” Although the post was written without ill intention, the article went viral and Low was castigated by readers.
A possible explanation for Low’s decision to publish his post could be explained by behavioural economist George Loewenstein’s research on people’s “paradoxical attitudes toward privacy,” or how online self-disclosure depends on the context. According to Loewenstein, “the cues that we rely on through culture and evolution to tell us there is a privacy issue are not present on the Internet.” In other words, the Internet, as a medium, muddles our perception of privacy. Users might indiscriminately post content without realising that it can be easily taken out of context and interpreted wrongly.
As such, we need to regulate our behaviour on social media, and think twice before posting content because online communication is not limited to the confines of our real-life social circles. Furthermore, with employers today checking prospective employees’ social network profiles, there is greater need for us to manage our social media presence.
A good way to start is to be more aware of the functions of social media sites. For example, tweaking the oft-neglected privacy settings on such sites prevents unwanted parties from viewing content meant only for a select few. When posting content, one can also use certain privacy functions that limit the number of people who can see it.
Such actions might resemble self-censorship. On social media, users should have the right to express their views and share what they want without fear of reprisal. However, the reality is that our lives are no longer private on social media. We must be aware that what we publish online can be seen by an audience wider than intended, and thus greater discretion is required in posting.
In addition, by limiting online communication to the people we really want to talk to, we might actually build intimacy. In his article, Deresiewicz also wrote “the value of friendship lies precisely in the space of privacy it creates: not the secrets that two people exchange so much as the unique and inviolate world they build up between them, the spider web of shared discovery they spin out, slowly and carefully, together.”
We have to rethink the way we use social media, but that might not be such a bad thing after all.
Tags: commentary/editorial