Anti-Social Media

Hello and I hope all of you lovely people had a great Labor Day. This week was an exploration into social media for both business and personal purposes and how the two can intermingle. On a personal level I am not very active on social media, I stick to Facebook and Instagram. But on a professional level I have always had to be very active on social media. When I worked as a Relay for Life manager I was constantly on social media accounts for each event. Whether it was Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, or some others means of internet socializing it was my job to make sure I was constantly interacting with people who followed those pages. Although the American Cancer Society is a huge organization it does not follow in the footsteps of companies like the Wall Street Journal, who have bots manning their smaller social media accounts. The only accounts providing "real" human interaction are their major Twitter accounts like WSJ and WSJD according to an article from Neiman Lab. That same article talked to six other communication and news-oriented companies and many of them said they use mainly real people as opposed to bots. A quote from the ABC News social media editor really struck me as interesting coming from such a large organization. Micah Grimes says, “The accounts are managed by hand, because we believe that you can’t replace the intuition, analysis, and timing of our editors, reporters, and producers — our people”. From this quote you can see that although ABC is a huge company they really think through their tactics for reaching their audience and what is the best for getting their headlines to be the most attention-grabbing.

I think a small part of why I remain fairly uninterested, at least compared to most other 26-year-old adults, is because I have been required to be so active on social media for my career. In my current role I am also required to be on Facebook to advertise the training sessions that we hold each month. To be honest I am a very anti-social person. I am very close with my family and have 4 or 5 very close friends - that's it. I have never been what someone would classify as a "people person", but I am a dedicated employee so if my job requires I talk to people (in person or online) I am going to do it. I do have bills to pay as well so that is always a good incentive to fulfill my job requirements. At a younger age I was more involved in social media because I was in the “Myspace age”. I started there and then began on Facebook around the same time that they opened Facebook to everyone and not just college students. In college I was in a sorority, so I am sure that you can imagine the amount of social media that involved for both sorority/school reasons as well as personal reasons, so I could stay up to date on any UWF news or drama. During my undergraduate year’s multiple anonymous websites such as Ask.fm, Formspring, and YikYak came to popularity. I saw firsthand how harmful these kinds of websites could be to a person’s sense of self and their confidence. Luckily this kind of social media faded out and most social media must verify that you are a person and not a bot or “catfishing” someone by pretending you are someone else. But even when you know who is on the other side of that tweet or post, it does not mean it cannot cause the same kind of damage.

The Pew Research Center says that social media users who are more involved in politics, meaning only people who are registered and intend to vote, are more likely to respond to a political post if they do not agree. The study also showed that politically engaged social media users were more likely to block or unfriend someone due to political disagreements or have changed their settings to eliminate such posts. For me, the Presidential election of 2016 was the point where social media began to leave a bad taste in my mouth. I deleted my Twitter account as well as unfriended a few hundred people from my Facebook page. I have personally seen disagreements between family members, close friends, and co-workers blow up into name-calling or worse. Politics and religion seem to be the two topics on social media that cause the most arguments between people. Due to the nature of the Presidential election and the candidates running for office it seemed as if every other Facebook post that I saw had to do with politics in some form. My husband is a US Air Force veteran and he is not one for political arguments but even he got dragged into political discussions via social media. Whether it was a friend on social media or one of the news outlets I followed it seemed like something that could never be escaped. The Presidential election brought out some of the worst qualities that can be achieved through social media, and I did not want to become one of those kinds of people. I did not want to get roped into one of those arguments that brings out the worst in you and almost always end in unfriending or crude insults. But, who could be surprised? We all saw the way that political candidates were acting on social media. If they can say whatever they are thinking – why can’t we? Why couldn’t we tell everyone on the Internet exactly how we felt about certain people or situations?

A McKinsey Quarterly report went into detail about why leaders should embrace social media and not shy away from it. Like I stated above, plenty of political candidates engaged in social media throughout the election process and someone could argue that whether they came out the winner or not all political candidates can be considered leaders. Regardless of the level of the politician, whether it is city council, state senate, or national political figures, they are all leaders in their respective arenas. While the McKinsey Quarterly report was referencing company leaders I believe their information completely translates to any kind of leader. By embracing social media leaders can gather more information from the public and communicate more directly with people they would normally never have the chance to interact with them. Social media can make a national leader into an international leader by spreading their words on a global forum. Business Insider makes sure to comment on how social media can be unruly and risky, and I completely agree. We have seen social media make or break celebrities, politicians, and other well-known public figures. As I have said, on a personal level I have backed away from social media since the 2016 Presidential election but that is not the case for everyone. I would not say that I am anti social media, but I am anti-social both in every day life and have become that way on social media. Professionally I continue to utilize social media in the ways my employer requests and use the successes and failures of others to guide my usage. By managing company social media, I become a leader in a sense and like McKinsey Quarterly suggests, I embrace social media to the fullest capability. I stay away from politics and confrontation on every level, and hopefully one day I can be as successful as the people ABC employees for handling their social media.

Here are the articles I have mentioned above if you would like to read more about the information I mention:

http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/05/whos-behind-that-tweet-heres-how-7-news-orgs-manage-their-twitter-and-facebook-accounts/

http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/25/the-political-environment-on-social-media/pi_2016-10-25_politics-and-social-media_3-01/

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-leaders-can-understand-social-media-2013-2