Social Media and Oversharing: Why Can't We Live Without It?

Today, we live in a more digitized world than ever. Every click, share, like has an impact on what we see and what we know. But, even with all the issues surrounding data and privacy on social media, many of us choose to incessantly share our lives. Why? Is it because we want to stay more connected or is it because we don’t know how not to?

It’s interesting looking at the kinds of things people share on social media and asking ourselves, is this useful? Platforms were never intended to promote actual meaningful content, rather they were a way to just stay connected with friends and acquaintances in a general sense. But more and more, there is additional weight to what is posted online. We don’t take what we see at face value-- often times we dive even deeper than we should. Suddenly, simple pictures of a night out creates FOMO and influencers’ feeds make us a little insecure about how normal our lives can be. Self-love becomes synonymous with posting lots of pictures of ourselves and we depend on the validation in our comments section a little more than we should. I know I do.

This can stem from the fact that social media was never meant to be useful. It wasn’t meant to be a healthy way of knowing other people. But now it is integrated in our daily lives. What does that mean for us?

Well first, I think it’s important to establish that not all aspects of social media are negative and not all reasons for ‘oversharing’ are bad. But there are parts of social media that are bad which directly feed into why oversharing hurts us more than it helps. For one, it’s strange to think about if our lives are private or not. There’s a lot of anyone’s day to day that doesn’t show up online yet, social platforms give the appearance of being a full image of someone’s life. If not a full image, it appears to at least give off a general idea. However, most users are subconsciously aware that a person’s feed is just their best moments but in the moment, we revert back to thinking it’s all real life. 

This is dangerous because it begins to serve as a means of comparison. Our worst moments are compared to others’ bests in a way that we know is irrational, but still, inescapable. We know it doesn’t make sense or isn’t fair to ourselves but oversharing is everywhere. And oversharing doesn’t mean people are sharing the bad parts. Rather, it means everyone is putting our more content that showcases their good moments.

I’m guilty of it! Like I mentioned earlier, it isn’t always a bad thing. Wanting to share what you’re doing, what you believe, what you think it something people want to know is what social media lends itself to being used for. And it can be fun taking pictures of your food and funny videos of your friends. It seems harmless, putting out all these (previously) intimate moments. But we’ve come to the point where we must question: is there another reason we do it? And does it matter if our intentions aren’t pure?

What I’ve learned from myself is that I overshare because if I didn’t, would I even be doing anything at all? I’ve discovered that many people I know feel the same way. This kind of unhealthy relationship with social media is almost embarrassing and out of character for most of us. In reality, most people who overshare don’t care what others think of them in day to day life. But, having the opportunity to curate an image of yourself online is so tempting. It’s easy to feel like you’re doing more if others know about it and it’s enticing to have control over who you are. 

We overshare because we don’t know how not to and don’t know if it’s better to stop.