Skip to main content

Proof That No One Really Cares About Our Social Media Posts


#SocialMedia #Twitter #SnapChat  #Instagram

 We sure like social media, don't we? Facebook alone has over 2 billion monthly active users, with a billion of those being daily active users. The average user spends about 35 minutes per day on Facebook. Just to give perspective, that's 350 billion minutes or about 66,000 years worth of human time spent per day...just on Facebook!  

 Probably most of us are using multiple social media platforms these days. Instagram, which was acquired by Facebook in 2012, has over 700 million active users, Twitter has 328 million, and Snapchat has 255 million. So, perhaps an aggregate amount of time we spend on social media these days is probably closer to 50-60 minutes per day, with many of us averaging well above that number. 

 A Few Caveats

 My "proof" that your (and my!) social media posts don't really matter is to mean that they don't matter significantly. We can all think of posts and social media connections that are meaningful and important. However, my contention is that, when we take our social media time investment as a whole, the time spent does not yield the return on investment that we are seeking. So, it's not that social media has no value - it clearly does! However, given how much time we are spending on it and why, it is not providing the level of benefits that we truly desire. For those of us out there that are using social media for business purposes, my "proof" is less applicable. I'm primarily talking about the social/recreational use of these social media platforms. 

 Why Do We Spend So Much Time on Social Media?

 Most of us use social media as it is intended — to keep in touch with friends and family and provide a convenient way to let those folks know what we are up to. This is not so bad, right? A curious thing happens when we start using social media though. If you are similar to me and most people, it's easy to get caught up with what is going on in people's lives and letting them know what is going on in ours. In particular, we get hooked into the "likes." Snapchat doesn't include that feature (right now, thank goodness), but Facebook has it, as do Twitter and Instagram.

 Just about all of us have "liked" others' social media posts, and we have posted comments or pictures in hopes others will "like" our posts. We might even compulsively check our social media to see how many people liked our post, commented on it, or shared it. It's also tempting to see how many friends/followers we can get, as if we are collecting stamps, Pokemon cards, or accumulating money. 

 Teens and young adults can get particularly caught up in this, which might include taking scores of selfies to get the "perfect" one, using filters and apps to enhance photos before posting, and only posting ones for the purpose of getting as many followers and "likes" as possible. Sure, some of us don't engage in "liking" others posts nor care whether folks "like" our posts. But most of us care...at least a little. Some of us are obsessed with "likes" and followers. 
Why do we care whether people view and "like" our posts? This will be the topic of another blog, but it is a way of giving and receiving validation. Attention to our posts, in the form of "likes," is one way of seeing that we matter to others. In this sense, social media "likes" are a social validation scorecard. At least, that's one of the hooks of social media. Acquiring more friends or followers is another way of receiving social validation. The more we have, the more we matter...right?

 Social Media as a Red Herring

 Should we be spending so much time on social media if no one really cares about our posts? It's important that we learn to view social media from a realistic perspective. When it comes to trying to get social validation, social media is basically a red herring. We are under a societal delusion that our posts matter, but they don't. At least, they don't in the ways that we deeply long for them to matter. Here's that proof. 

Proof That No One Really Cares About Our Posts
I'm going to don my philosophy cap for this "proof" that our social media posts don't really matter. I'm not going to cite research. Rather, my proposition is an a posteriori argument—that is, we can reflect on our personal experiences to see the truth of what I'm proposing. Are you ready?
  1. No cheating by opening up one of your social media accounts. 
  2. Did you check your social media last week? How many times would you estimate that you "liked" people's posts? Maybe a dozen times over the week? Several dozen?
  3. Try to think of a specific social media post of someone else's that you "liked" last week. Go ahead. I'll wait right here. Keep thinking...wait for it...got one? How long did it take you to come up with one? Were you even able to? If you are similar to most people, this exercise was fairly difficult. I can't even remember what I had for breakfast this morning, much less what one of my friends posted on Facebook last week. 
  4. If you were able to recall someone's post from last week that you "liked," how much time did you spend thinking about their post after liking it? My guess is, "None." This assumes a previously "liked" post did not pop back up on your social media feed for other reasons.
  5. Assuming you were able to recall one from last week, how long after you "liked" it did you stop thinking about it? Three seconds, maybe? Only long enough to scroll down to the next post, I would wager. 
  6. We've probably established now that you have "liked" social media posts from last week, but you are having difficulty thinking of ANY specific ones. Even if you were able to recall a specific one, chances are you did not think of it all after "liking" it.
  7. Now, let's flip things around. If you can't remember others' posts that you liked from last week, what are those other people thinking about yourposts? That's right. You know the answer. They are not thinking about your posts. Once they have viewed/liked your post, they have already moved on to other posts and other things. Why? Because they have a life! They can't afford to spend precious time thinking about your old social media posts. We know this to be true because we are not thinking about theirs. We move on as well. We are so inundated with information these days that we don't have the bandwidth to think about old news. 
  8. On a related note, if acquiring new friends/followers and "likes" within social media provided true social validation, why would we keep compulsively checking it? Why would we need to keep posting and trying to attract more followers? Trying to gain deep-rooted validation through social media is a Sisyphean task. If the time spent were truly fruitful, we wouldn't need to keep doing it. We would experience a sense of contentment as opposed to a neediness. 
  9. If we don't really care about other people's posts, then we know they don't really care about ours either. So, why do we spend so much time posting, viewing, and "liking" when, in the scheme of things, it doesn't really matter? It's a bit crazy, right? The "truth" about our social media posts and the "likes" that hook us is that they don't really matter in the way for which we are truly longing. 
The Takeaway
We spend a lot of time on social media, and we get some benefits from it. But, in the scheme of things, social media is a bit like eating potato chips. They taste good, but they don't truly nourish our bodies. Social media should not be used as a replacement for our in-person social connections. Spending quality time with one another in-person is the way to "nourish" our deep-rooted, hard-wired need for social connection. The time we spend with others in-person is what develops the deep relationships and social connection that we truly "like." 
The good news is that, to the extent that we use to learn social media to facilitate and enhance our in-person connections, we stand to come out ahead in terms of our happiness and well-being. Social media can be tantalizing, but we need to be very careful not to lose our focus on the real thing. Our in-person social relationships are what really matter.
by Mike Brooks, Ph.D.,
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Are we really listening to what MLK had to say?

#MartinLutherKingJr #MLK #CivilRights #DrKing In 2020, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday falls in a national election year, one that reminds us of the importance of voting rights, citizenship and political activism to the health of our democracy. King imagined America as a "beloved community" capable of defeating what he characterized as the triple threats of racism, militarism and materialism. The passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, alongside the 1954 Brown Supreme Court decision, represents the crown jewels of the civil rights movement's heroic period. Yet King quickly realized that policy transformations alone, including the right to vote, would be insufficient in realizing his goal of institutionalizing radical black citizenship toward the creation of the "beloved community." King argued that justice was what love looked like in public. 2020 also marks the 55th anniversary of the passage of the Voting...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Single Dose of CBD Reset the Brains of People at High Risk of Psychosis

#CBD #Psychosis #MentalHealth #Medicine #Neuroscience #Psychology #Weed P sychosis, a severe mental disorder characterized by a loss of grip on reality,  can include unsettling hallucinations and delusions . As no one’s been able to pin down a single cause of psychosis, it’s been even harder to pin down a treatment. But researchers behind a new JAMA Psychiatry study seem to be on the right track. In the study, they report that they’ve found a way to reset the psychosis-afflicted brain using an unlikely plant: marijuana. Researchers are increasingly finding evidence that the  active components  of marijuana can help ease symptoms in people with  epileptic seizures ,  chronic pain , and  post-traumatic stress disorder , but there’s much to be learned about its relationship to psychosis. The most well-known  cannabinoid  Δ⁹-tetrahydrocannabinol — better known as THC — has  previously been linked  to the development of psychosis...
Post a Comment
Read more

The crazy story of how ‘Stockholm syndrome’ got its name

#Movies #Hostage #PattyHearst #Psychology #StockholmSyndrome #Sweeden “Is there something wrong with me? Why don’t I hate them?” In 1973, 21-year-old Elisabeth Oldgren posed this question to a psychiatrist in the wake of a robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, in which she and three other bank workers had been held hostage from Aug. 23-28. As the standoff neared an end, police were perplexed by the victims’ concern for their two captors: Despite cops’ orders that the hostages be the first to leave the bank vault in which they’d all been holed up, all four refused. ame> “Jan and Clark [the criminals] go first — you’ll gun them down if we do!” 23-year-old Kristin Ehnmark yelled back. The nationwide spectacle led to the genesis of the term “Stockholm syndrome,” in which a person held against their will comes to sympathize deeply with their abductor. In America, the phrase is more commonly associated with the 1974 case of Patty Hearst, the kidnapped heiress turned bank robber. It h...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Unique Benefits of Teletherapy.

#BlackTherapist #Teletherapy #Triple5LightTherapy.com #AfricanAmerican #Therapist  b y   Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S. Teletherapy is seen as an inferior alternative to in-person therapy. But while it has some drawbacks, online therapy has plenty of pluses, too. First the drawbacks: Some clients miss their therapist’s office, which they associate with safety and healing, said  Jodi Aman , LCSW, a psychotherapist in Rochester, N.Y. Technical difficulties—from poor internet connections to visibility issues–can interrupt sessions. Finding a private, quiet space at home can be challenging. Still, many people prefer teletherapy. As psychologist  Regine Galanti , Ph.D, pointed out, the biggest myth about teletherapy is that it’s “a plan B approach.” Many of Galanti’s clients have been doing online sessions for years. Her teen clients, in particular, like attending therapy in their own space. Teletherapy is also convenient. “[I]t removes time barriers for people to ...
Post a Comment
Read more