Online and Overwhelmed

Staying Silent in a Thriving Social Media Landscape

Jessica Sniatowsky does not need to know what you had for lunch today. As she prepares to graduate McGill University with a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, she has found her avoidance of most social media, with the exceptions of Snapchat and Facebook, to be instrumental in managing her time:

“I would say that, in general, I am much less distracted and more productive with my time than those around me. I spend less time scrolling through the black hole of social media and trying to curate a post that will get me likes.”

Her social media accounts serve more practical reasons: her friends set up her Snapchat account for her to stay in touch, and her Facebook is almost exclusively used as an essential communication tool for group projects and committees. She couldn’t avoid joining social media, but she found she could avoid its most distracting features.

Sniatowsky’s position on social media is not unique, but certainly not the norm. The decision to stray from the online networking platforms that pervade seemingly every technological encounter we have today, from watching television to using our phones, is a loud gesture in and of itself. While it is not mandatory to have an account on every prevailing social media app (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter), most people do. How much one uses each app depends on different lines of reasoning. For example, I’ve recently gotten in the habit of creating more Instagram “stories” over Snapchat because I know I have a larger network of followers on Instagram. Nonetheless, for some, the social media landscape has become too overbearing.

One of the most common reasons for social media silence is the desire to remain private in an environment where people’s lives flash in front of us on a daily basis. Every encounter with social media shows us something that rattles us in some way or another, like a childhood friend’s engagement announcement, or an international news story that erupted since the last time you “checked” in, even if it was less than an hour before. This is the vicious cycle so many of us find ourselves in on a daily basis. And, it’s a good enough reason for many young adults to stray way from social media. Sniatowsky says it best:

“If someone wants to know what I’m up to, they should strike up a conversation.”

The pitfalls of distraction and the preoccupation with other people’s lives can outweigh social media’s promised benefits, especially when trying to become a content creator. Si Sun, a fourth year media production student embraced Instagram as a platform to display her photography until she went on hiatus a few months ago. When she was scheduling regular posts, she found herself becoming increasingly fixated on how many followers liked her posts, and how to broaden her following. Her disappointment lead her to retreat from Instagram:

“[…] I stepped back […] because I was seeking validation from others, even strangers, [and] it made me question my inability to curate content that people liked or wanted to see more of.” Sun does not use Twitter either, and her Instagram hiatus has definitely relieved her: “[This] momentary pause of using Instagram definitely stopped the […] needing [sic] to feel validated by others.”

An aversion to social media can evidently come from being overwhelmed by overusing it, but also from joining out of reluctance. While social media presents opportunities for upcoming content creators to get their bearings in a larger media landscape, I wonder whether the current flow of news, personal and international, has changed our conventional understanding of silence. For Sun, silence can only impact us positively:

“Sometimes, it’s good to have silence. Or [just] to disengage from media. It gets [to be] all too much at a certain point when everything is trying to get your attention […]”

As appealing as silence sounds, it’s harder to achieve when users become increasingly dependent on social media to fill in awkward gaps of time. As Sun explains,

“It’s easy to get sucked into being distracted with cute animal videos or fake news and then I find that some are [so] desperate to be the motivation of one’s attention that it also dictates the ridiculous content…it’s all cyclical.”

When people rely on social media as a crutch for their personal insecurity, silence is difficult to achieve. When social media is merely a means to an end, it’s easier to disassociate, which Sniatowsky and Sun have respectively experienced.

Sun says,

“These apps are purposeful when the user has a constant goal to fulfill, whether that’s to entertain or to curate original content.”

However, the process of constant curation comes at a price, according to Sniatowsky:

“When everyone has a voice one can argue that no one does. The constant stream of unfiltered content and thoughts being shared through these apps detracts value from any one individual’s voice.”