The Shame of Social Media
I am about as far from a digital native as one can be. I actually believe that I emit some kind of electromagnetic field that scrambles computers’ brains whenever I come close to them. Still, I am fascinated by social media, and not just for marketing purposes (honestly, I don’t need to market: all my business has been word-of-mouth referral for the last twenty years.)
I am more interested in the kind of change social media makes possible. As I understand it more and more, I am impressed by how singular a space it is to try new things in both private and public ways.
As in:
- Social media interactions are comparatively anonymous: you choose who witnesses what you do, and how, and of course, on the internet nobody knows you’re a dog.
- But at the same time, what you do on social media is also public: when you do something, you more or less have to let your curated bunch of connections know you are doing it. That’s the point.
In other words, it seems to me that you have control over HOW you are connecting, but not THAT you are connecting. Which makes it a unique space in which to take risks, or seek support, or get accountability help, from those you choose to connect with. And since my work is all about taking risks, making connections, and staying accountable in the supremely challenging area of personal change, it has my attention.
But I am beginning to perceive a pitfall built into all social media platforms I have experienced which threatens to scuttle my desire to use it to help people make change. It’s that all social media, by design, runs on fear. The compulsion to participate may feel like its driven by desire to connect, and perhaps initially it is. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that connection is underpinned with anxiety.
See what I mean:
EXHIBIT A: Among my demographic, Facebook posts are almost always positive: celebrations of how your life is awesome – your beautiful vacations, your exquisite meals, your attractive and clever children. So really, Facebook is set up to be a rampant, insatiable sharing of everyone’s performance of the best they ever hope to be.
But everyone’s best efforts to appear awesome all the time are in turn consumed by real people who, though they are not saying it, are having decidedly less awesome daily lives, because daily life is just not consistently awesome. So FB really becomes what some sane people call comparing your insides to somebody else’s outsides. Occasionally there will be someone who tries to be more real – who actually shares when things are going poorly, “no filter.” But in a world full of Listicles, there are so many ways to Facebook wrong. So really, Facebook exerts a subtle message about how important it is for your life to be awesome – and if it is not, it lets you know that you are the problem, because everyone else is doing great. But you better keep trying, because everyone is watching.
EXHIBIT B: On Twitter, there’s a one-character difference between sharing a Tweet with just one, intended person, and sharing it with thousands (citation needed). Twitter isn’t a place I live yet (I am starting my social media world with FB, LinkedIn, and this blog), but we’re always hearing about someone who has shared something compromising or embarrassing. Part of the “overshare” error is the ease with which Twitter lets you mouth off about whatever is on your mind, which lends itself to sharing ill thought-out sentiments and poor word choices. And of course, it is up to everyone to share thoughtfully, because on the Internet nothing is ever truly deleted.
But I am beginning to believe this one character difference between a secret and a disaster is something the Twitter designers actually built in – that the high risk of sharing something meant for one with many is a design feature, not a design flaw. It is as if they set out to create a way of connecting that had a high probability of drama, both intentional and not. As if they knew that when the chances of looking are foolish are heightened, so is everyone’s awareness of someone looking foolish, and commensurately, their self-justification in swarming when someone’s error puts blood in the water. Which swarming, in turn, gives people a lot more to Tweet about.
FINALLY: I don’t use Snapchat; it’s an undiscovered country to me, but I am beginning to understand that its (in)famous anonymity (scourge of parents everywhere) is actually a built-in way of disclosing just enough to create social anxiety in its (mostly young, excruciatingly self-aware) users. While a user cannot see the content of Snaps that her friends share with each other, she can see how many Snaps are being shared among them. And there is a system of emojis that indicate what those Snap counts might mean that show up next to your friend’s names, with a focus on intimating who is your best friend, who says they are but maybe isn’t, who cares more about whom than they are in turn cared about, etc etc.
So the inability to see the WHAT leads to a lot of conjecture about the HOW MANY, which is worse. Bottom line: Even this most anonymous of platforms always gives you data that it asserts are valuable as you try to figure out how your social life is doing – and, by their count, it usually is something to worry about.
I fully confess that these three observations might be because of my ancient geezer, “get-off-my-lawn” status – but I don’t think so, not fully. After all, advertisers have known for more than a century that the key to creating desire is not really the effective assertion that your product is superior to another’s, but rather the creation of an urgent need in the consumer that can only be met by your product. The most urgently compelling force in humankind is not physical hunger, or the esteem of others, or even sex: it is shame, and the desperate desire not to feel it.
And therefore, any experience which can tap into shame, and manipulate the user into feeling it in ways that compel use of the product, is profitable. For mouthwash, the desire was that you become ashamed of your morning breath, and buy the product to remedy it and therefore get morning kisses without embarrassment. For social media, the desired outcome is that you use it a lot – that its experience becomes contiguous with your real life (more uses = more eyeballs on advertisers’ ads). And if you need to be on social media to ensure that you are not feeling shame, or to manage the shame it made you feel, or to fret about whether or not you are about to feel shame – well, then you are exactly where they want you to be.
Here’s the thing: I know that in order to make permanent, lasting change in one’s life, a person has to feel a bunch of stuff he has been working very hard NOT to feel.
- He has to become aware that there might be a mismatch between what he wants to be good and what he is actually good at;
- That there might be a disconnect between what he thinks are his primary Motivators and what they ACTUALLY are, especially when he is under stress;
- That there are probably a welter of strong emotions and fears that he brings in from his childhood and upbringing that he has unconsciously managed NOT to think about, but that are still bashing around in his life like a bowling ball in the trunk.
And the first reaction to realizing any of these things is usually shame. Shame as the deep conviction not that you have DONE something wrong (that’s “guilt”), but rather that you ARE wrong: that you are irretrievably messed up. Shame is certain, and managing shame becomes job one because it is so predictable, and so destructive to the capacity to make change (because we’ll do anything to avoid feeling it).
The ways to manage shame include:
- getting honest about feeling it,
- sharing the feeling with someone you trust (frequently me),
- developing a plan about what to do when you feel it (not letting it convert into anger, which it does easily – anger that then gets dumped on people who do NOT have it coming),
- and becoming accountable about following the plan every time the shame comes back around.
I had hoped that social media would offer an opportunity for people to encounter some of these tools in low-stakes moments that are anonymous enough to let them take a risk and try something new. But I am starting to doubt that it can, because there is already so much shame built into the theory of action that drives social media that it might be impossible to have an experience that doesn’t involve it. I just don’t know yet.
But there’s a bright spot, too. What social media DOES offer, incessantly, is the promise of distraction. Distraction from whatever work you are trying to avoid right now because it is hard – and, frequently, distraction from the exact feelings of shame that social media also exploits to get you to keep coming back. But that also means that people show up on social media looking for something to make them feel better, and they usually find it. Although it is usually a short-term fix of cat videos (which might have gotten a bad rap, actually).
What if people who are looking for something to make them feel better could find solutions that REALLY help them feel better – that give them tools that will get to the root of their driving shame for the first time?
That’s what I am working on doing as I develop my social media presence. The images and questions I am posting on my feeds are designed to interrupt the daily stress and anxiety and ask provocative questions about what is driving folks’ presence on social media at all, looking for something to escape into. I am deeply impressed by Dan Roam’s work on how images hold attention more effectively than words, and am beginning to pilot a series images designed to cut through the noise and offer a signpost toward a real solution to people’s pain.
I would love your feedback on which of these images get your attention and “boost the signal” of the promise of real change in the areas of your life you probably thought never could. And if you’d like to know more, please come to my Web site and learn about the tools I offer.
I hope I can find a way to let people use the anxiety, fear, and shame that social media cultivates to open a new door of possibility that they didn’t even know existed. Small ambition, I know – but really, the only one that matters to me. Ad Astra.
Thanks to www.socialmediatoday.com for image.
Russ Osmond 