Is Overshare the New Norm?

Last fall, our awesome ELISE intern, Kira Loretto, wrote a thoughtful post about the potential harm social media can inflict on your career. People are beginning to learn this: don’t post photos of yourself engaging in illegal activity without making sure that nobody you don’t want to see them, can. Don’t set your Facebook status to read: “Don’t feel like going to work today. Calling in ’sick,’” if you’re friends with your boss.

But what about the things we post on-line that aren’t damaging … just annoying? In an article about Twitter for the New York Times last month, David Carr expressed the problem that many people have with social media platforms: nobody cares what you had for breakfast. Carr makes the argument that in spite of this, Twitter is a useful tool: you just have to be selective about who you follow.

Easier said than done. Aside from proving valuable resources for information, social media services like Facebook and Twitter allow us to stay connected to old friends and far-away family members like never before. How else would I be in touch with the German exchange students who spent a year at my high school, my cousin teaching math to girls in Qatar, my continent-crossing sister? By writing a letter? Surely, you’ve never seen my handwriting.

But my desire to stay connected to people in my life means that I can’t do as Carr suggested and be selective in my following and friending, only aligning myself (virtually) with people who provide solid, useful information. It means that I’m opening myself up to dozens, if not hundreds, of posts about what my friends had for breakfast. And more than that, it means that I’m on the receiving end of a terrific amount of overshare.

I’m not alone: countless Web sites and Internet memes have been devoted to people who “suck” at social media. Aside from enthusiastic self-promoters and “app” addicts, the one group that seems most universally hated is the oversharers.

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Let’s take a little peek at your Facebook newsfeed, shall we? Your perpetually pregnant childhood friend posting about how “the morning sickness is so much worse than last time: I spent the morning throwing up!”? Overshare. Your lovelorn sorority sister who, after a date, posts: “Finally, a great date! Dinner and a movie and then …”? Overshare. All of the people you know who share break-ups, make-ups, potty stories, bedroom stories, and drunken pontifications? Over. Share.

Think of it this way: you run into an old acquaintance on the street. You haven’t seen each other in five years. Do you talk about your most recent trip to the bathroom, or your most recent trip to Bermuda? Unless you’re both gastroenterologists, I think you know what the answer should be. Use that mindset when posting to Facebook or Twitter: if you wouldn’t say it in person, it doesn’t belong on-line.

So please, folks: leave the poopy diapers, the bar brawls, and the deep moments of self introspection off your status messages and Twitter updates. These are things you should share with a select few, not the unwashed masses. It might not affect your career, but it’s guaranteed to affect your relationships with your social media contacts.