Is Social Media Breeding A Self-Obsessed Culture?
LinkedIn recently launched their Social Selling Index, this credibility scoring metric is just another attempt to make me crazy!
LinkedIn recently launched their Social Selling Index
This credibility scoring metric is just another attempt to make me crazy, so I committed my life to increasing my score… because who wants to have a low LinkedIn Social Selling Index (hands over eyes).
In light of this obsession, I had a look at all the platforms that nudge our psychological need to be the best Socialebrities (social media celebrities – it’s not a real word) in our networks we are surrounded by stimulus endorse our obsession with being “cool”, or “awesome” or “popular”.
On Facebook, we hover around our most recent posts of pictures or statuses for likes and comments, we actively search for new followers on Instagram using ridiculous #hashatags like #followforfollow #followme, and privately hate those people who have >300 likes on their really highly average picture.
We identify mass followed twitter handles so that we can mention them in the hope of getting a retweet and cringe when we see a “favourite”– I mean really what is the point of favouriting my tweet, it’s like a read later tag on a tweet?! Come on, it’s 140 characters you can read it now!
Then Klout decided to combine all our online influence into one number so that we could lose our minds trying to increase that... To add to all this, we have pressure to make something go viral. Virality has not sure equation for success it just all depends on how people perceive your content and if it’s entertainment value is enough, at the right time for it to spread across the world. Can we all just calm down!
Remember those days when only brands cared about impressions and awareness measures, but now we are all brands our individual brands shape our careers and our development curve. Our dependency on likes and social recognition from people we don’t even know is right up there with “wifi” on Maslows updated hierarchy of needs.
As soon as we find a Wi-Fi hotspot, we check our Instagram, not where we can find food or how close the nearest tap is… Point proven…
There has been much research that looks at the behaviour that drives people behaviour on social media and to emphasise my point here is some research around what people like to share and how this feeds directly into the self-obsessed culture I speak of.
Below are the 3 top things that people share on social media
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43% post pictures – lets be serious, if its not a picture of you then it is a picture you have taken and it’s an ego boost either way. Posted either to confirm you that you are pretty or that you take really pretty pictures
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26% share opinions – by their very nature opinions are your thoughts on something. Posting them is just a way to be heard and have other people reaffirm that you are right or not and then you can tell them why you are.
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26% share status updates of what and how they are doing – do you honestly think all 500+ of your friends/ followers need to know you are feeling tired, exhausted or AWESOME? I mean really, do you walk around with a sign that says I’m feeling silly today?
This is a self-obsession that is brought about by thinking that everyone cares… and God forbid no-one likes or comments because then you may actually feel like it’s true.
Without harping on about all the things we do on social media, including me writing this post and how it is feeding into our personal obsession with being perceived as cool or smart or pretty or popular.
Our social media profiles are an extension of who we would like to be perceived as. IRL (in real life > that is a topic for a different post) we interact with real people and we share real experiences – how about for just one day we concentrate on making someone else smile or laugh or feel special and see the world for what it is opposed to how people would like us to perceive it.
Simply put, your self-worth should not sit in the cloud, it should come from a place much deeper than your pocket.
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Find out more on the future of Culture at our DLUK - Trends Briefing on the 24th September 2015