To an outsider, we’ve become shareoholics. We’re obsessed with sharing every detail of our lives, whether it might interest others or not.
If you’ve been on Facebook lately (and there’s a slight chance you have), you’ll be aware of pretty much everything your friends are up to – what they did at the weekend, where they went last night, the type of breakfast they had this morning. You’ll know it all.
A friend recently welcomed her baby into the world. She celebrated the event on Facebook and we all revelled in the news. She posted images of the baby, of the hospital room, and of the arrival of her family at the hospital. Then her husband shared images of his family arriving at the hospital. Then a status update on the celebrations. Then she shared images of the gifts they’d received. Then he did the same. Then came the many “thank you” messages. Then details of the journey home.
I’d long ago switched off.
Now I’m no killjoy and as guilty as the next person at sharing my life on social media (read: The Day Social Media Took Over My Life), but I wondered if these weren’t private moments for the two of them, their newborn, and immediate family. I also wondered if some of these “magical moments” weren’t really moments to share at all, particularly over Facebook.
Photo credit: misspixels (Flickr Creative Commons) |
We all need to share
As a blogger and frequent traveller, I feel an obligation to share – it’s my primary means of keeping followers up-to-date with this journey.
I share my writing through the blog and its Facebook page. I share my travel photography on Instagram. I’m active on Twitter and I post images on Pinterest from time to time. Sharing is a par for the course and I’ve accepted that this comes with the job, so to speak.
But I know when I’ve crossed a line, when the need to share my work has been replaced by a desire to share a mundane aspect of my life that I didn’t really need to. Or when, in the rush to share, I missed savouring the moment itself.
I saw others suffering from this same affliction on my trip to Canada (read: Travelling Across Canada With The World’s Best). We’d arrive at a destination and my colleagues would scurry off in different directions desperate to capture a unique angle resulting in a hundred “likes” on Instagram or Facebook.
It became something of a daily obsession.
How could we best frame an image on Instagram? Which platforms would we share the images through and at what times of the day in order to get the best reaction? How many hashtags should we use and how could we take maximum advantage of the ability to bomb our followers’ feeds on Facebook?
In the rush to capture and share a beautiful scene or object, we arguably missed the experience of seeing the object ourselves – spending time appreciating the beauty of it, taking it in, just looking at the thing.
But I got to share it with everyone else and that’s all that matters, right?
It wasn’t always this way
Once upon a time, life was different. Travel was different.
I think back to living in Ottawa and making a surprise visit to Chicago. It was my wife’s birthday and I wanted to take her for a long weekend at the third largest city in the US, to stay in one of Chicago’s impressive hotels, to wine and dine her in the best spots around this vast city, to have a brief respite from our regular life.
This was back in 2004 and Facebook was still in its infancy. Twitter was jut a twinkle in its founder’s eye and Instagram was nowhere to be found. I didn’t announce the trip, didn’t post any pictures, and only immediate family knew where we were travelling to.
We spent the weekend as holidaymakers, just the two of us.
We hit traditional tourist spots and we ate at fancy restaurants. We took plenty of photos but we saved them until our return home. We gave each other our full attention and we didn’t give a hoot whether others knew about or shared in our fun. To this day, I can vividly remember every detail of that weekend and this was nearly ten years ago.
There was no pinning, no stumbling, no sharing.
And now I watch friends and family, bloggers and ‘grammers, living their lives through the wonders of social media and I wonder whether we’ve got too good at sharing too much.
Living in the moment
There’s a danger that we’re not actually living our lives.
We’re living a life we want others to know about. We’re promoting the best parts of our life, minus the warts n’all. We’re missing precious moments because we’re head down on our iPhones or we’re taking pictures for the purposes of an online application rather than enjoying the sights, sounds and flavours around us.
It’s a tough call.
We’re hardwired to share. Facebook has become our “go-to” in momentous events and our first thought is often how many “likes” we’ll get from sharing an update rather than whether we actually “like” what we see in front of us.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Sharing is sociable, fun, and a great way to keep in touch with key events happening in the lives of our friends. What’s more, choose a life overseas and it’s probably the best way to ensure you’re connected to loved ones – at least in spirit, if not in body.
But if your first thought is to reach for the iPhone to share something before you can sit back and soak it all in. Or if you’re constantly online posting about the great time you’re having, without actually being out there having that supposedly great time, then you have a serious obsession with sharing.
The question is whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Are we revealing too much of our lives online? Can you balance sharing with living in the moment? Where’s the line between positive sharing and an obsession to tell the world about every little detail of our lives?
Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Aisha Isabel Ashraf says
I agree, Facebook and its ilk can definitely become an addiction. The more time you spend documenting your life on it the less time you’re actually living it and so it becomes a vicious cycle – more Facebooking takes place to fill the void.
I’m familiar with the dilemma of preserving the moment to share versus immersing myself in it (the objective-subjective dichotomy) through photography. Many’s the time I feel I’ve missed a “moment’ because I was watching it through the lens.
Thanks to photography I’ve become more alert to the need to accommodate both and learnt to trust that my memory will take care of these treasured times too, if I only let it.
Thankfully, I don’t have an iPhone so when I’m away from my laptop I’m firmly offline and any oversharing just has to wait, by which time I’ve had a chance to reassess whether the rest of the world really needs to know. But that might all change now that I’ve been sent a robot to test-drive – it needs an iPhone as its CPU. You might already know about it… I shared it on Facebook π
Kym Hamer says
Aaaah it’s a tricky balance isn’t it?
I try to write about moments that inspire me, that make me stop and wonder, think, disagree, be moved. Whether it’s walking across the local park and feeling absolutely blessed to live where I do and be where I am in life or the thrill of a good play, book, concert, it’s about putting ‘me’ out there – and people who feel connected to that or not are free to engage (or not). It’s one of the reasons that I’m reluctant to turn my blog into anything more than just my thoughts, or to take on writing in a more structured, themed sense.
Facebook is more closed and private for me. My blog has a FB page which anyone can look at but my personal page is different. I’m choosy about who I ‘friend’ (eg. no work people no matter how close the friendship) and without it, I would miss connecting daily with some of the people I love most: my sister (and erratically on FB Mum) in Melbourne and my best friend, her hubby, dog and 2 little dudes in Seattle. Who by the way, also ask where my next blog post is, relying on it to feel my daily moments from far away!
There are constant endorsements to combine everything and optimise through all social media channels but I try to remember why I do this: to write as an expression of who I am, to connect with those that matter to me and to honour those who feel an online spark as they read my stuff. And if I disconnect from ‘me’, none of that happens.
Russell V J Ward says
Hey Aisha, thanks for stopping by.
I just put up this video on my Facebook page which covers off my post and your thinking perfectly – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8&feature=share
That said, we went out on the weekend to the beach and I took along my SLR capturing some lovely images we’ll cherish and preserve. But I kept my phone in my pocket as much as I could π
Russell V J Ward says
Great comment, Kym. I share your sentiments entirely. I think the expat element comes into play for us – we live away from family so Facebook is a great way to share and keep in touch.
Remembering back to when I first left the UK and I had no means at tracking my loved ones’ lives other than the odd phone call using a phone card. As for the less immediate family, I had absolutely no way of keeping in touch so I appreciate and see the value in Facebook. Like you, I try to keep my page professional and my profile personal. It generally works. And, also like you, I tried keeping work colleagues away from my personal profile, especially after a former manager claimed that I’d “de-friended” him (which I had). Hmmm. Bit embarrassing that.
Patti Pokorchak says
AAAH, that video made me want to cry for the loss of being with someone more interested in his phone than for the lovely lady by his side. We are oversharing and forgetting to enjoy the moment as it happens!
Russell V J Ward says
Absolutely Patti! It’s a great video, isn’t it? But there’s something so very sad about the number of precious moments being lost as the video unfolds. It made me rethink when and where I choose to pull out my phone!
louloufrance says
I really enjoyed reading this and saw that YouTube video the other day. I think it is spot on.
As with most things in life, it’s all about balance. And moderation.
I appreciate having an iPhone (it was a gift from a friend who upgraded and didn’t want it anymore), but would never have bought one myself.
And now I use it. A lot. But I really try to leave it in my purse and be present in the moment. Which isn’t always easy!
Facebook is fun and great for keeping up with friends and family who live so far away, but I see it mainly as entertainment. Unfortunately some people put up every single life event and if you missed a particular update, there can be hurt feelings because you didn’t congratulate them, etc.
I have now asked (kindly) that if it is really important and they want me to know about it, please send an email or a text or even, gasp!, call me. π
Russell V J Ward says
Good plan! It can become a problem, especially when friends are hurt because you didn’t publicly wish them happy birthday on Fb, even though I only saw them at their birthday gathering a few hours before! But definitely balance and moderation. I also rely on the skills of my wife as social media monitor – if she sees me absent or missing a particular moment, she might just nudge me or try to draw my attention to it. I explain it’s work-related but she doesn’t buy it, particularly when I’m watching a funny video or online skit! Oh well…
Kym Hamer says
Ouch…yes I imagine!
I left Oz in 2004 so the growth of Facebook occurred in parallel with my time overseas. It was by compete chance I was and ‘early adopter’!
Andrew Creelman says
Great post Russ, and one that I can definitely identify with.
I was at a concert last night and saw SO MANY cameras and even tablets out to record the event. These devices were held so high that they actually became an irritant for everyone stood behind them, trying to watch. I’m sure people at the concert had a much better time than those who would be watching whilst checking Facebook or Twitter….but nevertheless, the need to share footage like this has quickly become ingrained with how we behave at concerts AND interact on social networking sites.
It’s scary!
Living for the moment without feeling the need to share actually seems so refreshing now!
Russell V J Ward says
Almost ditto for me. And life before Skype and FaceTime! An early adopter indeed. And now look at you – a social media guru π
Russell V J Ward says
Thanks Andrew. Great to hear from you.
Interesting story about the concert. It’s got to the point where, as you say, it feels refreshing not to share when others around you are going crazy with their phones and tablets. Almost rebellious?!
In fairness, when on my recent trip to Canada, we were being sponsored by the national tourism commission so expected to ‘work’ (i.e. blog, photograph, share, etc.). But we all found it funny to sit down to dinner at a posh restaurant, the chef entertaining us with the back story to the meal we were about to tuck into, and us all head down on our phones sharing on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. We were the most antisocial bunch and we did get some strange looks from our fellow diners π
Laura Fortey says
I have a really weird memory with pictures. When I look at myself in images, even from a young age, I can look into my eyes and remember what I was thinking at the time the picture was being taken. It’s a really cool (sometimes painful!) way that I can transport myself back in time. It’s funny though with the over abundance of pictures of myself lately (as we all seem to have now) when I look at my eyes in some images I know I am just posing for a FB profile photo or smiling to look good on FB and there is no real joy or memory behind my eyes. This has actually saddened me just thinking about it..One of my fav reasons for images (the transportation in time) is going to be worn off with this over abundance. As a kid from the 80’s I have some childhood images, but today kids are being snapped with every step they take (and seeing the image straight away!)
In short, I think that over-sharing has gotten WAY out of hand! Especially when people post 10 images of their kid eating ice cream. My advice would be; snap away, but share and cherish only the best – and try to capture REAL moments..after all those are always the best images
Russell V J Ward says
It’s funny to think how far we’ve come since those days. I agree that we’re far too concerned about what the image might look like on social media rather than savouring the moment and appreciating the fact we’re taking pictures to keep as visual memories for later on. We’re still doing the same things but for completely different reasons.
I can never understand why anyone would think that other people, including family, would want to see the ten similar images. It’s that impulse to share kicking in. I tend to share personal pictures via apps such as Whatsapp with my immediate family for their own viewing pleasure, and occasionally I post a family picture on Facebook – ‘occasionally’ meaning once every 2-4 weeks. I feel more comfortable doing it this way but different things work for different people. Great advice by the way π