How Much Sharing is Oversharing?

This week I posed a mini card (pictured) that is part of a set a college friend of mine just started selling. Back in the day she made zines, today she does beautiful hand lettering artwork with a purpose and she helps organize retreats. I love her work and loved the idea of being able to pick through 50 mini cards to find something that spoke to me on a given day. On Tuesday I came across the one pictured here, "don't let their energy change yours." It was Election Day and with all the focus on 2020 and all of the political division associated with it, this phrase spoke to me. So I snapped a picture and posted the accompanying text. We had a pretty heated local municipal race so I felt the urge to remind folks that even if there wasn't a big ticket office at the top of the ballot, we still need to get out there and cast our votes. You could say that my post, like Lizzy's art, had a purpose.

But if you click through my Instagram feed, you'll also see that last week I posted a food shot (meal prep for my lunches for the week) and I shared photos from a race I completed in. My feed also features images from our Halloween party, photos of our pets and more fitness related posts. Why did a share all these? I can give you reasons for some of them ... I thought my lunch meal was really good and others might want to try the recipe. The pets are a no brainer and I was really proud of our Halloween costumes this year. But is with all the fitness posts? Do I need to share those? Why do I share them?

The recent reading assignments for Theory and Practice of Social Media course got me thinking about why we share things. I like to think I'm not an over-sharer. And lately I've found myself questioning why I'm about to post something and whether I really need to. Don't get me wrong, I like social media (for the most part), and what I like about it is that my family who lives far away shares photos and thoughts about what they're doing. It's a great way to stay connected when we don't always have time (with the time difference) to talk on the phone. But I'm also amazed by what some people are willing to share online. A friend of mine is planning a trip to Disney, so she joined the Smart Moms Planning Disney Facebook Group. It's a closed group, so I can't see exactly what they're all saying, but she has shared a few posts that surprised her this week. One woman posted that her husband drank three jack and cokes and had a horrible hangover and she didn't know what to do because they had reservations at Cinderella's castle (someone responded she should leave him for Chef Mickey). Someone else posted a question asking what they do for iced coffee at hotels and noted where they are staying. If it were me, I might look up the closest coffee shops on Yelp, rather than pose such a question to a Facebook group.

Personally I've noticed that stopping to think about why I'm posting something and whether I need to has led me to share less. Perhaps we all need to do that a bit more, so a mom doesn't ask 203,000 people in a Facebook group where she can find the closest iced coffee.

This blog post is an assignment for the Theory and Practice of Social Media course at NJIT.