Why people don’t like social media!

Here are three reasons that people do not like social media.

1. Some people prefer a private life and not a public one.
2. Some people prefer to separate their personal lives from their professional lives.
3. Some people fear being taken advantage of.

This BLOG post looks at each of these reasons and analyzes them.

Many people are very public about their personal lives. The ultimate example of this might be an exhibitionist like…Lady Godiva, who bared it all in the streets of Coventry England. Many people choose a more private life. They are not people who want the limelight. They prefer to be in the shadows. It is not that they do not want recognition. They just have calculated the disruption of notoriety, and prefer a quieter life. I know this because I married a private person who is different from me.

Social media is a form of communication that gives people like me an opportunity to influence public policy debate. Andy Carvin the twitter extrovert who organized an army of tweeters is a great example of this. The Guardian Newspaper labeled him as, “the man who tweets revolutions.” The power to influence public policy debate motivates many of us to tweet, post, and lead people who follow us. People who were once in the background, locked out of the political process can now persuade a following with a lap top, smart phone and internet connection. The megaphone of social media has created a community of political activists who at one time could only write letters to the editor, or run for committee person. Now these people have been empowered to fuel the fires of an Arab spring. To a person driven by causes this can be the closest thing to heaven on earth.

Some people prefer to separate their private lives from their professional lives. My wife does not like to mix these things. She also does not use social media. She only joined my protected Linkedin Group because I asked her. She likes the fact that it sends emails to her inbox, which she can manage better than the wild west of tweets, posts and connected groups. I even have to pull her towards my lap top to see pictures of our grandchildren posted on Face Book. She is not a public person. She prefers privacy and peace. She does not want to be hassled with the unsettled business of public policy debate. Today my boss told me, “If I do not have time to call my daughter, then I do not have time for social networking.” All of us separate our public and private lives by varying degrees. What is the escape valve that regulates this balance? Perhaps, our discomfort when the things that we care about are put at risk. Our aversion to risk or the embracing of it can have an impact on our desire to be public people. This balancing act of risk and security is at the root of us becoming public people. This may vary in every person based on the topic, audience or our perceived competence at the time when we become more public.

Many of the teachers at my school feel that their work is not to be shared. When students share their work with one another or their answers from a test it is considered Plagiarism. Plagiarism is something that our teachers consider stealing. When our students steal others’ ideas without properly giving credit we teach them that it is no different than taking money from our wallet when our backs are turned. There is a thin line between collaboration and plagiarism. The tipping point is when we choose to take advantage of someone else’s hard work, and take credit for it. Then we are no longer collaborating, instead we are exploiting the trust of others.

Some of us prioritize our time in different ways. The saying goes, “Time is Money”. Is it possible that some of us itemize our time? If something takes our attention away from something we care about, then it can appear as a thief of attentiveness toward the things that we most value. Each of us has differing aversion to the betrayal of our ideas. When we strike a balance between our desire to share and aversion to being taken advantage of, then we have a discovered a threshold to regulate our risk and maximize our collaboration.  

These are just three reasons that some people do not like social media. I am sure there are more. As technology increases and our emotional intelligence catches up to it, then perhaps we will bridge the gap between the risk takers and those who avert risk for security.