Why We Overshare and How to Deal With It
Users of social media have risen about fivefold in the recent decade. In 2010, there were 970 million social media users, and by 2022, there would be 4.65 billion social media users worldwide. According to statistics from Our World in Data, the global population will reach 7.87 billion in 2022. This indicates that the number of social media users now has exceeds 50% of the total global population.
There are a variety of reasons why people keep using social media. Keep in touch with family, discover recent news and stories, fill spare time, or even do an online shopping. According to Healthline, social media addiction can result from dopamine increase, this is a neurotransmitter that associated with pleasure. For instance, when we browse social media and find a humorous posts, or when we publish something and receive great feedback, our brain perceives this as a reward. This will trigger us to repeatedly reopen social media to obtain those amusements over and over again.
When we upload anything that receives positive feedback or many likes, our minds will get obsessed. At this level, we will continue to make more posts in an effort to attract greater attention. We continue to share without considering how much we have shared on social media. At some point, we fail to recognize that we have overshared information that should be remained private.
Why does people overshare?
There are plenty reasons why people overshare. We cannot deny that a tiny part of our minds, including mine when writing this article, is seeking attention when decide to post. I told myself I was doing this to learn how to write a great content so that I might become a great content writer in the future. But I cannot deny that there is a glimmer of confidence that someone would enjoy my articles. As humans, we do appreciate knowing that someone admires us or our work. It’s, either way, just a human common sense. But as the pleasant feeling of receiving attention grows, the individual may turned out to become narcissistic. We feel they admire us when in reality, they may not even care.
Beside being narcissistic, having low self-esteem can be a reason why people overshare. At some point of our life,we require the approval of others to cover up our insecurities. All of people in the world inherit an emotional need to feel secure, and having someone’s approval is one factor that will lead us to feel that way. When we insecure about our body shape, we tried our best to take a photograph of our body to be seen as attractive as possible on screen, even if it’s not real. We post and post again to make people believe that our body shape is great.
Being or feeling lonely can also be a cause why people overshare. The difficulty of engaging with real people can lead lonely people to post many things on social media. When those lonely people discover that others are experiencing the same issue, they may increase the intensity of their posts. By posting frequently and accepting feedback and sympathy from others, they will be encouraged to post more so that they no longer feel alone.
Why overshare can be bad?
In social media nowadays, when the apps interface are consistently improved, we can almost share everything with one single click. This ease of sharing everything will correlate with an increase in the desire to upload lots of items as well. We can post our photos, check-in locations, and other personal informations.
Without our awareness, posting our personal event will make criminals get easier to take advantages. The simplest example is when you post that you are on vacation, it inderictly indicates that you are out of town and your house is left unocuppied. It will be easier for the thieves to steal anything at your house. Additionally, by frequently expose personal details like our identity can risk your own cybersecurity and bring threats like online phising or even hacking your bank account.
Others than all impacts I mentioned above, oversharing can also be harmful for mental health. A new study found that people who are spent more time using social media are more likely to experience depression. When we post something and we didn’t receive any feedback as we want, we will feel unliked. It will drives us to post more, even most risky one, to gain attention and validation. Like dr Preeti Kocchar, a counseling phsychologist, said to Healthsots “If a person feels that their thoughts, feelings, and emotions are not heard and understood, they may be left feeling isolated and unsupported. This, over a period of time, may trigger insecurity in some individuals whose sense of self-validation may be lacking and may turn them into validation addicts,”.
Let’s imagine another example in which we tweet without prior consideration. After we post it, it turns out to be controversial, and some individuals express their disapproval. Suddenly, we regret our decision to post it. And from that single provocative post, the one you previously posted unthoughtfully, may result in a greater impact on your life, such as accepting the cancel culture from others. Obviously, this is also extremely damaging your mental health.
How to stop overshare?
First thing first, we should aware that everything we post on social media will be possible to be seen by others. The bigger amount of people who can see it, the more thoughts and feedbacks you may receive. So, before you post anything, give attention of below things.
- Be mindful of what and why you post.
A mindfulness is when you understand the purpose of your post. You should be aware of why you should do this. Make sure that you did not share for bad purpose. If you are struggling with any emotional pain and about to share it to get any solution or support, it will be better to reach out for real people in our life like close friends, family, or professionals.
2. Make sure your life and cybersecurity is safe.
Before post anything on social media, make sure that the post doesn’t include any private information. There are a lot of common security questions that widely used for online security. Make sure you never told anything that will be answer for those questions. It’s also better to not overshare of your current locations and check-ins. For your safe and comfort, just don’t make anyone easier to detect where you are.
