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What You Should Know about Oversharing on Social Media

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We, as humans, are social. We love to connect and share our lives with our family, friends, classmates and co-workers among many others. And we’ve carried that way of thinking onto the internet, where we share even more with our hundreds (if not thousands) of connections. But sometimes, we get caught up in sharing that we forget that we can overexpose ourselves and made vulnerable to the dozens of online threats.

So what makes us overshare?

Experts believe that we overshare because we are trying to overcompensate for our own subconscious anxieties. We feel the impulse to look smart, sophisticated and well-versed among our groups in order to feel more accepted. And that problem gets amplified as we take our thoughts and feelings to internet waves.

Meanwhile, when we share in the real-world, we usually alter what we say in accordance to the situation. Many of us can tell whether a person is frazzled, tired, uneasy, or any of the dozens of other feelings we can infer from someone’s body language and facial cues. This is what experts call “self regulation.” But unfortunately, we have trouble self-regulating what we say online because we don’t see a face staring back at us.

So how can we try and self-regulate ourselves from oversharing on Social Media?

1. Always think before you blog/post: If you have to think twice about whether the content your sharing is worthwhile, chances are it probably isn’t. Many of the things we share are private or personal and that can get us into trouble. So stop posting about your marriage, your bathroom habits or when you’re going out of town.

2. Turn on those privacy settings: Social media sites are inclined to have privacy settings in order to protect their customers. So use them. If you still don’t think sites like Facebook and Twitter are taking your privacy into account, you can browse through five new social media networks to keep you and your family safe.

3. Don’t badmouth people: It’s best not to hold grudges in general, but to badmouth someone online is a good way to land in hot water. Especially if the person on the other side of it is one of your close friends, family members or even employees. We’ve seen plenty of firings from Facebook rants that could’ve been avoided.

4. Decrease your political banter: Politics is usually a touchy subject with people. In which case it’s best to lay on the side of caution when proclaiming your political mindset to the masses. We wouldn’t want you to infuriate your close friends, family or even potential business partners when you can leave the political banter to the courtroom, or to your voter registration.

5. Stop talking about you, you, you: We understand that you are the center of your world. But to the rest of us, you’re probably our 25th favorite person (I’m just ballparking). So it’s best to stop chronicling your every movement and maybe talk someone else up a bit. In fact, make that a habit of yours from now on.

Oversharing on social media

Who of us is learning not to overshare?

It might be unexpected, but its our children that are learning from our mistakes. According to the Pew Research Center, a study revealed that younger generations are posting less personal information about themselves on their social media networks than ever before. The study accounts for this change because young people are enabling their privacy settings and using other preventative measures due to more awareness around them when it comes to oversharing on Social media (ex. such as parental guidance).

With Facebook and other social networks becoming the norm, we’ve grown accustomed to sharing our lives online on a daily basis. But we sometimes forget that many of the things we share are too personal and can land us in hot water and make us vulnerable to online predators. But if we stick to the rules above, we can catch up to these younger generations and avoid the depths of oversharing on Social media.

Hope you have learnt why you shouldn’t engage in oversharing on Social media? If you have any contribution or questions please use the comment form below. Remember to subscribe to my RSS feed.

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Comments

  1. Social networking invites users to step beyond the boundaries of electronic privacy and share the highlights and even mundane details of their daily lives. Whether you’re posting a status update on Facebook about washing your car or tweeting about your visit to the dentist, it would seem that most updates are innocent blasts of personal information.

  2. I totally agree with you, as much as Social media is a good platform to socialize, we should have a boundary for the things we should share and the ones we shouldn’t. Thanks for your contribution.

  5. I totally agree with this post. Yes we should not share only our blog posts. We need to share valuable content either it’s belong to our blog or to other’s blog.

  8. Nick, 4 is something people need to learn early as social users….or they learn the hard way.

    Rational, successful calm people become irrational when talking politics because most people are heavily attached to their view of things in this area and act way to emotionally. They cannot discuss without being rude or boorish.

    Cut out the political talk guys!

    Thanks for sharing!

    Ryan

  9. Of course, If we use social media in the right way, there are lots of benefits ! But using social media on wrong way it can destroy our blogging career too.

    I am totally agree with this post :)

  10. hi there nwosu. i know many fb users who only wants to talk about themselves and because i felt annoyed, i decided to unfollow them and in worst cases, i unfriend them. i really hate fb users who feel that they are center of the universe. in my case, i rarely post any personal information about myself.

    i prefer retaining some form of mystery around myself. perhaps that is part of having a zodiac sign, Scorpio…majority of people under this zodiac signs love mysteries and we also love secrets. we find enjoyment in uncovering mysteries :) we do not like people who always divulge information about themselves including smallest details

  12. As much as people will have different believes and views of politics you should avoid talking politics on the social media to avoid making someone angry somewhere.

  13. Thanks Bishnu Subedi Nishan for your comment, Social media could be a two sided weapon if not well managed. Thanks for visiting, do have a nice day.

  14. Thanks Marilyn for your contribution, social media shouldn’t be abused and folks who do so may not even know they are so this post serves to remind and teach suck folks to stay away from sharing some kind of information on the social media.

  15. Great topic again Nwosu. We should think at least twice before doing any thing in social media. Every one should know the difference between sharing and bragging(aka. over sharing).Any one who is in social media already have these psycho buddy/relatives. Bloggers should not add themselves to this list, You depend on your readers.

  17. Hi Nwosu,
    I understand what you mean to say here. I have a couple of friends who put up pics of themselves, family, kids and even pets at least 4-5 times a day. That only makes them the butt of all jokes. One should know where to draw the line.

    Now that you are at it, can you help me set my privacy settings so that my friends do not get to read each of my updates like, “Ambika is now friends with XYZ”, “Ambika likes this”, “Ambika posted blah blah in ABC group’ etc”.
    We bloggers use FB a lot for promoting our articles and latest posts, and I dont want it to be a constant source of irritation for all my family & friends.

  18. Yeah, accepting your views that we should not over promote on Social networks.

    It might annoy the readers too and would result in loss of visitors for your blog/website.

    I too suggesting that over sharing is bad and it would be good if you share in genuine limited ways.

    Nice post from you Nwosu

  22. You have shared a nice article. These are the tips that every blogger should follow while sharing on social media. New to your blog & really like what you have shared here. Thanks ntrenchard.,

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