Not Cool Enough for Facebook: Social Media Manners
I am a grown-up. Well, most of the time. But Facebook adds an element to my life sometimes that makes me feel like a gangling, unattractive 14 year old who wasn’t invited to the slumber party. It is a weird phenomenon to read about a bunch of my friends who got together and didn’t invite me. Now, I don’t intellectually think I need to be invited to everything. In fact, if I was invited, I might have even declined because we have a lot going on. And often on the weekends I am near socially phobic because I have talked to so many people that week in my professional life and I just want to chill.
But when a bunch of “friends” post on Facebook about the great time they had together, and I wasn’t invited, it hurts my feelings sometimes. But this isn’t an article about my feelings. I’ll deal with my feeling on my own time. This is an article about this weird time we live in with social media and technology in general. Our parents didn’t have to deal with this! Their friends didn’t have Bridge parties and then post about it on Facebook. Talking about it would have been impolite. I can’t imagine one of my mom’s friends saying to her, “We had a party last night with about 20 people and we had a great time, but we just couldn’t invite you. But let me show you some pictures of us having fun. You are friends with all of us, so I am sure you would like to see them, wouldn’t you?” NO! Because it would be bad manners. But this is exactly what happens on Facebook all the time.
I am not sure what our new etiquette around social media should be. Should we all just toughen up?
I have a friend who has lots of friends and she is also troubled by this. When she invites a few people over, and they post on Facebook, her other friends wonder why they weren’t invited. Now understand this–she’s not the one posting the pictures. She knows that might hurt other people’s feelings. She has really good social skills and doesn’t want to have that kind of impact on people. And she can’t invite everyone every time. They weren’t invited because every time she has someone over, she doesn’t want to invite all of her 600+ friends! Sometimes she wants to have a conversation, an intimate gathering. What should she do? The etiquette is confusing! I would suggest we don’t have etiquette any more to deal with these kinds of social media situations.
I’m a grown up (Really!) and this stuff bugs me. What is the impact on our children of this phenomenon when they get constant reminders of the gatherings they aren’t invited to? Is this safe for them? Is the increased connection that Facebook offers also worth feeling left out because kids can see what they aren’t invite to as well?
I don’t have a brilliant answer. I would love to hear from you and what you think the etiquette should be. I’m sure we’ve all found some rules of etiquette around social media. For instance, I don’t post if I am having a bad day. I try to keep my Facebook persona positive. No one needs to hear about me in the doldrums. I don’t do partisan politics most of the time and I try not to involve my friends in my video game time wasting (although Candy Crush is sucking me in). I don’t do email forwards and if I have a big party I post an open invitation so no one feels left out.
What do you do to have good etiquette on social media?
