The Trap of Social Media
Trap Alert !
People transform their behavior if they are aware that they are being watched. In the current social media era, anyone can look at you always and that is a real fact.
You must have used diaries in the past to record your thoughts when you didn’t encounter social media. Even if you spoke out and dropped your pens, your thoughts never reached an audience bigger than your friend circle or close family members. Even your peers who may desire to keep tabs on you were not able to track your career decisions like they can today.
Developing personal brands turned everyone into a public relations professional. Also, high-risk averseness is observed among public firms. Thanks to social media, you now need to justify the big risky career moves to your friends and even your neighbor (if you have added them on Facebook or Instagram). Believe it or not, social media has transformed us into beings who constantly seek approval from others.
Public firms and individuals active on social media are being watched always. For public organizations, the assessment occurs in the real-time transition of the stock market ticker. We are judged on social media based on our social status, comments, and likes. Similar to the stock market, your social status varies every time you post content online. Your status will rise considerably if you post a picture of your six-pack abs on a popular beach in Dubai. Backroom gossip would immediately begin as soon as you tell your peers that you’re leaving a company to join a multinational company that is worth billions of dollars.
A point to ponder is that 24-hour access to social media has surely over-socialized us. Your every action can be criticized and you, therefore, try to use filters in your pictures and write sophisticated language on social media to show off to your friends. Now it takes just one single tweet that can end your career and damage your Google search results. By developing an online audience full of critics, all those eyes have changed you considerably. Psychologists term this the “Hawthorne Effect”. It states that individuals tend to change their behavior if they know they are constantly under surveillance.
Takeaway
Social media has also reduced our capability to take big risks since we always need to justify our choices. Social media has transformed us into objects of criticism. My simple advice is to only spend a limited time on social media. If you make it a habit to spend at least 2 to 3 hours on social media, then it can have devastating consequences. The best option is to keep it to yourself whatever decision you are taking in your life. But don’t completely quit it since social media also is a good source of news information.