While thinking about our class blog about twitter and shaming, I started thinking about my own reasons for the use, and lack of use, of social media. I looked up some articles for common reasons people may choose not to participate in social media. This short article interested me because it mentions oversharing.
Specifically the article states that oversharing is one of the primary reason people give for not using social media. The article suggests that the reason is that other people overshare. I can see that, it can be a lot to wade through, especially if you aren't on a lot. As the article suggests, this does seem to be a human behavior problem not a tool problem.
Have you ever been in a live class where someone raised their hand all the time? I wonder if in a live environment this would count as oversharing. To me this is actually one of the pluses of teaching online, I hear so many more voices, so much more balanced. So I am wondering it this is really the problem or if it who they are following.
On the other side, I wonder if it is really a fear of oversharing yourself. I wonder if people feel they will be pushed to share something they don't want to. Or that they might regret something they shared later. For me, this was more my concern. How vulnerable do I want to be? What is the chance I would publicly make a mistake?
What do you think? Is oversharing a problem? How so?
Oversharing, or saying something you might regret later is definitely one of the reasons why I don't utilize social media much. We all have the right to change our opinions about things, but once its on the internet, its there forever! On the other hand, I do have friends that share things online that I would never dream of, and yet that hasn't changed my opinion or perception of them much. I think you are correct in that it could be more of a personal fear than anything else.
ReplyDeleteI likewise try to censor what I put onto the internet. I have had my identity stolen before on LinkedIn and had someone impersonating me in another account. They had taken information about from various online sources. Unfortunately, as in this instance, it was impossible to protect all of my information that they found, but it does make you realize that anyone out there can find information about you. Better to be safe than sorry. The other concern I often have is when it comes to employers searching for your information. I have heard stories of people getting fired or not being hired because of their online presence. I try to keep it as clean as possible on my social media accounts for this reason. There are certain areas that people get very sensitive about such as politics, religion, etc.
ReplyDeleteI definitely censor sharing, avoid really personal information, more sharing interesting things I find on the web. Then there are the folks who are sharing their "perfect life . . ." The nature of both of my jobs is that it's best that I am careful what I share, totally avoid politics or religion. But it's not rocket science to figure out my political affiliation based on some of my posts.
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