A #NoFilter "Selfie" Of My Social Media Use 

First published: 2018/04/28 07:50 (metric, UTC-4) on selfreflectionjk.weebly.com

Let’s start with Facebook. Facebook has really evolved since I started using it in 2011, when I was in Grade 8 and it was cool to spontaneously post a line or two of text describing what you were doing at a certain moment in time or put out a request for “likes” in exchange for a “TBH” or “Remember When” (at least I seemed to think it was cool). 

A Facebook post that doesn’t contain a picture, video, or link to some other website or article is pretty hard to come by nowadays. The fact that so many people and organizations are on Facebook is why it’s so appealing and addicting to me: it’s my primary news outlet, the source for the majority of reading and video-watching I do for entertainment or informative purposes, and it allows me to receive updates on what’s happening in the social groups I’m part of.  

Likewise, the only kind of posting I’ve done recently on Facebook other than the odd photo, has been the sharing of news articles, blog posts, videos from other pages, or some other kind of information from external sources for the most part.

Instagram, which was bought by Facebook Inc. in 2012 for $1 billion, could just as easily go by the namesake of its parent corporation as its main purpose in my opinion, is for people to create a “book” of personal photos for the viewing pleasure of their followers (although, the new story feature has made it more about truly sharing your “telegrams” instantaneously, which is where the word “Instagram” actually comes from).  

The image-exclusive nature of Instagram, aside from the short captions that accompany each picture, is a bit more visually stimulating and a bit less stressful on the mind than the often text-heavy nature of Facebook posts which may explain the greater appeal to a younger audience who have grown up in an age where they've been conditioned to have shorter attention spans. 

For a while I had no interest in using Instagram as there seemed to be stigma attached to male users on the female-dominated platform (68 % of Instagram users are female according to Omnicore: https://www.omnicoreagency.com/instagram-statistics/) but I gave in once it became more popular for everyone in my age group. I use Instagram now when I’m bored and I want to see what interesting things my friends, family, acquaintances, or celebrities are doing and the creative ways they share their experiences. 

This is what I post on Instagram for: to try to share whatever photo evidence I have to show that I have a somewhat interesting life. My favourite account to follow on Instagram is Satiregram (@satiregram). It posts photos of simple sheets of notebook paper with different handwritten descriptions in lowercase text to subtly mock the clichéd nature of the average Instagram user, which I quite enjoy.

Twitter is the social media platform I spend the least time on of the four mainstream social media apps. As mentioned, my Twitter account looks a lot like the Facebook wall of my younger self: full of 140-character-or-less textual updates on things occupying my mind, which non-coincidentally most often relates to sports in some way. 

Twitter is based on the idea of restricting the number of characters one can post at a time and each Tweet doesn’t fill the screen as much as a post on one’s profile or in the feed of Facebook or Instagram, which has resulted in a hub of instant, moment-by-moment insight on almost anything you can think of.  The instantaneousness and universality of Twitter is what I like most about it: it’s pretty cool to be able to read raw, emotional thoughts from influential figures like politicians, athletes, news reporters or other celebrities as events are happening.

Snapchat is the only other platform I regularly use that I would consider social media, although it’s more of a hybrid between social media and instant messaging. The “story” feature, which I’m pretty sure Instagram ripped off, is the "social media" aspect of it. 

I like that this is also typically more of a raw or unedited way of sharing pictures and videos instantaneously which sets it apart from Instagram stories which are usually more filtered or of higher quality. The worldwide story map feature is something I find really cool as it allows you to drop in to see glimpses of the lives of people all over the world. 

The fact that the only feedback you get from posting on your story is the names of the people that viewed it is interesting to me but I haven’t decided if I like this better than the traditional “like” feature of the other social mediums.

In my opinion, when someone posts on a personal social media account, it’s for the same reason a business would post on their account: marketing. 

Anyone who posts a picture of themself or what’s happening in their life, or sends out a tweet, or shares a link, is most often trying to add to their personal online brand which they hope will translate into how people see them in real life.  

It’s not usually consciously for self-serving reasons though: sometimes you just want to show your friends and family what’s happening in your life, what you’re seeing on your trip, who your friends are, what you’ve been reading or watching, what crazy food you’re eating, that you’re being an idiot by pulling an all-nighter to finish an assignment, etc. or to show appreciation for your siblings, or friends, or your partner. 

All of this is great right? It helps you stay connected with your friends and family and gives them something to talk about with you when they next see you. Nothing wrong with that, is there? 

But why can’t you just talk to the people that you think would care about these things without posting them on social media? Why do you need to show your appreciation for friends and family and romantic partners publicly? Why do you need acknowledgement from all 500 of your acquaintances to confirm that what you did was worthwhile? 

From my own experience I’ve come up with a general theory about why people engage in personal online marketing by posting on social media:

Two exceptions:

• They’re using social media solely to spread information

• They’re using social media to sell or promote something 

In other words I think that the real reason people, including myself, feel the need to market themselves by posting on social media is that they are somehow missing quality real-life interactions they are desiring at that point in time with people in general, or specific people. 

By posting on social media, you convince yourself that you are having real connections, or mutual experiences with the people who like or view or comment on your post.  It’s kind of a sad way to look at things but I believe it’s true if you really think about it. 

For example, I know for myself personally, my social media posting frequency went way up when I was on my co-op work term last year and I was living away from home even though I was living with people I was friends with. I just felt the need to to share my daily experiences and try to stay connected with the other people in my life since I wasn’t able to for real.

Think about the last time you posted something on Facebook, or Instagram, or your Snapchat story. Were you alone at the time? If you weren’t completely alone, were you at least somewhere away from your closest group of friends or family? 

Even if you were in the same place as a lot of friends when you made the post, was there a certain person or group of people you wished you could’ve been with at the time to share the experience with, or at least to talk about the experience with? 

If you answered no to all these questions, then you may be lying to yourself: if you were with everyone that you could ever have wanted to be with at the time of the post than who were you trying to reach on social media? 

I guess it’s possible you could’ve just been making a post for the potential people in the future you may want to learn about your personal brand. It still works with the theory though; it still means you were feeling alone or isolated, that you were missing a connection you desired. 

I hope I haven’t made it seem like I’m implying that anyone who posts something on social media for something other than informational or business purposes is an unstable, antisocial loner or that I’m blaming people for acting on these feelings of being alone or isolated. We all desire interaction with other people and social media allows us to have interactions in ways that people were unable to before the internet. 

I just think one harm in posting on social media too much and spending too much time browsing through other people’s social media posts is that we trick ourselves into thinking we are strengthening relationships and having real interactions with people when really we are not. 

When everything is already posted online for everyone to see before you have the chance to talk about it with people first-hand, I’d argue it can even take away from relationships and conversations you could have with friends and family.

Also, if I had to make a list of the top 100 stupidest things I've said in my life in hindsight, probably a good portion of these would be things I’ve said through text, email, or other forms of digital communication. 

I think this is because when you're staring at a screen instead of someone's face, you construct your own ideal concept of what the other person is thinking and feeling and you trick yourself into thinking that the other person has a better understanding of where your coming from, and what your own thoughts and feelings are than they really do. 

This can also apply to how you think people are reacting to your posts on social media. When someone likes your Instagram pic, in your mind you may be imagining this person gushing over your photo, talking with their friends about how interesting it is, how cool of a person you are, etc. when really they could just be laying in bed in their underwear scrolling through the screen and double-tapping every picture they see.

I also don’t want to give the impression that expressing oneself is a bad thing: it can be fun to be creative, or artsy and share this with friends, or to show your personality to a large audience online without having to get out of your comfort zone too much. 

The issue though is that this really is the same kind of marketing businesses engage in. It promotes competing with each other, trying to one-up each other, getting more likes than each other through beauty, wittiness, creativeness, or having a more interesting life which to me, seems really unnecessary.

The terms “Insta game” or “caption game”, which people use in reference to one’s ability to get likes on Instagram or the ability to come up with clever captions for one’s pictures, imply competition. It just gives you such a good, satisfying feeling each time you see one of those hearts or social media icons pop up in your notification bar after you make a post, right?  

I think all of this can really have an effect on people’s self-esteem and mental health without them realizing it (both the person posting and those viewing).  Constantly looking at how other people are living or other people showing off their body, and never feeling good enough, never feeling interesting enough can really take a toll on a person over time. All the filtering and editing that goes on to deceive people from reality does not help with this.

Now I have to admit, to make sure I’m being transparent here, that I think I’m being a bit hypocritical about this a bit. 

First of all, if I think about it, the pictures and all the information about myself I’ve put on this website could be considered personal marketing in the same way as if I’d put this stuff on one of my personal social media accounts. 

It may be shocking to hear, but the header pic on the About page unfortunately is not 100 % unedited.  If you went through my phone you’d find a whole album of photos of me posing awkwardly in front of a bedsheet in different kinds of clothing. 

Another act of possible hypocrisy on my part, is that I’ve used social media to bring attention to this website, which is likely how many of you who are reading this got here. My (arguably B.S.) justification for the first point is that I wanted to add personality and life to this site so it's not just some guy talking through text on a black and white screen and to show you who this guy really is. 

To justify why I ironically use social media to bring attention to a blog that criticizes social media, I'll claim that as stated multiple times on here, my primary reason for doing this isn’t to market myself and my own personal brand but to challenge and motivate myself by writing stuff down and sharing it. Please don't be afraid to call me out or challenge me on any of this!

So now that I’m aware of the harm social media can have on my relationships and the mental health of myself and others what should I do? Should I just stop using social media altogether and delete all my accounts? I don’t think that’s really necessary because what’s in the past, is in the past and also as mentioned, there are some aspects of some of the social media platforms that I find useful and beneficial that don't really have any negative impacts, other than the amount of time I spend using them.  I think the best thing I can do is just to try to think more about how much I’m using social media and why I’m using it. The following points are some things I’m going to try to do going forward to help myself: 

• Keep track of how much time I spend on social media using RescueTime and limit myself to a certain amount of time each day

• Take intentional breaks from social media for longer periods of time (for a weekend, for a whole week or month, etc) to help control my compulsive addiction of checking social media (I once gave up social media for the lent season, which is 40 days long and I found I had so much more free time to do other things that I hadn’t realized I was missing)

• Use the following test before posting on social media (Yes/no decision chart): 

  • Is this something that you need all of your social media connections to know about, that you can't share with all of them in person? (Yes or No)

  • Is there only one specific person or group of people you truly want to see your social media post? (Yes or No)

  • Did you think about and name the real reason why you want to post this? (Yes or No)

  • Did you think about the negative effects this post may have on others? (Yes or No)

  • Do you really need to make this post or are you just acting on your instincts? (Yes or No)

  • You're completely sure this is worth it? (Yes or No)

  • Really? (Yes or No)

  • 100% sure? (Yes or No)

I know it seems kind of ridiculous to make such a big deal about making one social media post. I admit that it’s going to be hard to actually live out. It's hard to make changes to my habits, to do things differently, to be different than other people. Actively using social media in this day in age is almost an expectation for everyone especially for people around my age (although I know a couple people who have always had a limited social media presence which I used to not understand but am now inspired by). I hope that now that this is out in the open, I will be motivated to follow through with these things. Through this reflection, I'm not trying to finger-point at anyone or make anyone feel bad about their social media use. My main goal with creating this site was to help myself work through these kind of issues. But if you really think about it, you do some self-reflection, and you see like I have, how the social media habits that society has led you to be accustomed to may be having negative effects on your life and others, why not try to make some changes?