As you might have noticed I am back active on the socials again. Not just with sharing the new and exciting steps My Story Of I is taking but also actively engaging after being mia on the socials for more than a year. At the moment of typing this it’s been about a month since I rejoined the social media community and I have some things I just can’t stop wondering about. I just can’t help but wonder about social media etiquette. The answer to your follow up question is yes and no. I know I don’t have to say the question specifically as I am fairly certain that you know what it is.
First Moments Back on The Socials
At first it was actually a little more exciting than daunting to be back on the socials. Yes it absolutely spiked my anxiety and it still does but I am managing quite okay as I immediately made some changes after the first spike. I simply stopped scrolling the feed. I’ll do it once a day and that’s it. I do kind of want to stop completely as I am noticing that on days that I am not active on it at all my brain just works better and I feel generally happier. In my time of completely breaking business social media etiquette I did some poking around the web trying to find out whether I was absolutely crazy for nothing missing it at all.
For the moment I am still researching thus I won’t be sharing much as I don’t want to put out any information that is not actually properly researched. However I can tell you that I am not the only one that when going mia on the socials felt better and there is actual academic research backing that sentiment. There are also lots of blog posts and YouTube videos with people explaining their own stories so I am definitely not alone in feeling general positive effects of breaking one of the social media etiquettes of my generation.
The only thing I still do multiple times a day, three to be exact, is check the notifications. I don’t want to let someone waiting for ages for a reply, so it’s more a courtesy thing I find important which brings me to social media etiquette rules. Are there any and should they be followed? Perhaps more importantly what are they? I can’t help but wonder about this specifically because I have every plan of diminishing my social media rule of checking notifications three times a day to once a day and never on Sundays.
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Of course I have done some research and it confirmed my initial thoughts that there are indeed many people who have written about what the proper social media etiquette is for businesses, for students and for basically any and everything else under the sun. Let’s be honest here; when something exists not long after there is a rulebook out that we should follow to a T. Here also lies the problem, following something to a T is very hard. Us imperfect humans are hardly ever capable of doing it.
Social Media Etiquette vs. Social Media Ethics
Really hardly ever, which brings even more attention to the last wonder I had which was what is the correct social media etiquette. This question goes in tandem with what is bad social media etiquette. I personally feel that I have no voice in this as I fear what sparked this post is a personal annoyance of mine that I have had for the longest time. I just have to say that I can’t help but wonder about several posts I saw clearly dictating some form of social media etiquette. I, of course, on the one hand wonder whether they themselves adhere to it and on the other hand how did they come to the conclusion that it was a good social media rule.
Before I continue, I know that every platform has their guides on how to use them and what is appropriate behavior and what isn’t. The guides that I am talking about here are not those. These are the ones that, as far as I could tell, were made by people often using the platforms for different specific purposes, such as a business or personal brand etc. I am sure you know of numerous types of profiles.
The thing I can’t help but wonder about the most is the ethics of it all, which was the main topic in the tweets mentioned earlier. The ethics of social media etiquette. In running my business I find doing it in an ethical way very important, as I truly believe everyone should but not everyone does. This feeling extents to the use of the My Story Of I Socials as well, at the moment predominantly twitter. When I see something that I know is not ethical my mind immediately goes to the social media etiquette. Isn’t being ethical a universal thing that should encompass all and everything? Don’t understand me wrong I am naïve, but not naïve enough to believe that this also happens in real life.
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With everything that is happening in the world right now and the influence social media plays in that, wouldn’t it be better to uphold some kind of ethical rules regarding the use of social media? I, of course, can’t ignore the elephant in the room which is that even in our offline lives their is no 100% acceptance and understanding of what is and isn’t ethical. I am speaking from my own reference frame as to what I think is unethical behavior but perhaps if you had seen the tweets you would think it is perfectly ethical and adhering to your moral codes of social media behavior.
Don’t understand me wrong I don’t want to narrow it down to twitter and make it the problem child. I love twitter, just in small doses. I am almost completely convinced that there isn’t a platform, social media or others, that doesn’t deal with behaviors that are not immediately categorized as ”good”, whatever that may be. I’ll leave those decisions to each respective person.
Before I sign of with my last unresolved wonder I just want to point out the obvious that I did speak on. I am a 100% aware that if you don’t like someone’s content you should unfollow them and that will solve all your problems. I do that already and I actively encourage everyone else to do this. However the content I saw appeared on my feed by association.
Social Media Rules That Have Been Proven Unethical
The other day I was reading up on how to improve the business and be able to provide better content and all that good stuff. I was reading an article by someone well established in these fields and they basically said that certain behaviors, al though perhaps unethical, work. Of course this person gave an explanation that justifies the behavior. It basically came down to the method used might be wrong but the end result that both parties get is good and it is your, the creator, obligation to make that happen. The judgement of this I am leaving in the middle, you make up your mind.
What this does is highlight what I said above that all platforms deal with bad social media etiquette, in their own way. However upon reading the article something else got brought to my attention. Could it be that there is indeed a whispered social media etiquette that we all know? Then extending the question, could it be that we purposefully ignore the line of ethics that is written in it as it serves a bigger goal? The one that keeps the majority of us on the platforms.
I can’t help but wonder, does the grand scheme of things on social media override the ethical part of social media etiquette?
Love,
DCPR.
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