One of the puzzling occurrences with the advent of social media is the importance of photographs rather than the real experience. There are those who would go to a certain place for the purpose of being photographed with the venue to be posted on the social media sites. The first thing to be done when the place is picturesque is make it as the background, then proceeds to the ogling of the digital photo forgetting the scene since it is now ABOUT THE PERSON/S NOT THE VIEW.
Eating is also another thing. When people eat out these days, it is a requirement to take pictures of the food first before consuming them. Food attendants are even trained to take good pictures using smart phones to capture the moments. There are instances when the old-fashioned folks grimace on the things we do with the food. You see, lots are going to re-arrange the food and tinker on them so to look good in photos. There are also instances when such folks wonder whether the photographs are more important than the food itself and the time with the people you dine with.
The site shutterstock.com mentioned that perhaps the strongest force driving our motivation to share is based on our sense of identity - more specifically, the desired version of ourselves that we want to project onto the world. In a study conducted by The New York Times, 68% of the respondents said they post photographs and shout-outs to give people a better sense of who they are and what they care about.
Renowned psychologist Carl Rogers provided an explanation that our personalities are composed of the REAL SELF (who we really are) and the IDEAL SELF (who we want to be). He said that we are constantly motivated to pursue behaviors that bring us closer to our ideal self. On posting things on social media sites, the content that we share could be seen as a reflection of the person we want the world to see. A valid example are those activities and travels to represent our social identities.
Do we need to find answers on everything that we do? This could be a valid question from the reactive people once we tell them such explanations. This writer thinks so. We must be aware of the driving forces of our actions since we are the managers of ourselves. We need to understand the psychology behind our actions because they might affect our families and even the small communities we are in. We could not say WHO CARES! since we have to take responsibility to our actions. We might even dwell on having personality disorders if we do not monitor our own quirks. With doing so, we could lead towards maturity.
Yet, we continue to post US. There is nothing wrong with using the technology at hand. But we always adhere to the fact that there are NORMS we have to conform with. There are universal values that we have to embrace like respect and empathy.
Scheff (2015) said that in 2014, Career Builders released a survey that revealed 51% of job applicants were not hired due to their social media behavior. The survey also found that the percentage of employer’s eliminating applicants because of their social media behavior continues to climb; in 2013 it was 43% up from 34% in 2012. Entrepreneur Daymond John said that his companies GOOGLE every applicant they consider for hiring.
Self-care and self mastery allow us to draw out the best that we could be. We need to understand the driving forces within to gauge whether they are productive or counterproductive.
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