Socially Acceptable Media

“We all have a face that we hide away forever
And we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone.”
© 1977, Billy Joel/Impulsive Music

Most of us are social creatures – in fact, if you’re reading this blog you must have some level of interest in social media or social networking likely belong to one or more sites or groups.  Social media sites are wonderful tools because they allow us to disseminate information to a wide audience very quickly and anyone who follows us will get the message.

But is it that way in the physical world?  Would we want everyone who “follows us”, all of our friends, relatives, and business associates to read the same messages?

For myself, the answer is a resounding “no!”.  It’s also the same for many people I’ve spoken to on the subject.  In “real life”, we tend to refer to this concept as worlds colliding, and such a prospect can have equally disastrous sounding results.  Family members being exposed to business conversations, associates eavesdropping on things you tell your friends, or even a potential employer finding your profile and dredging up everything – all of these could make for a very bad day.

Before the advent of the internet, search engines, and social media; managing these kind of collisions was relatively easy.  We could compartmentalize areas of our lives and makes sure the contents of one compartment never overflowed into another.  Today things are far more complicated.  When we post something to Facebook or Twitter or Friendfeed or any other networking site it’s there for any of our followers to see, and without some digital gymnastics it stays there forever.

Solving this problem is fairly straightforward if you’re just starting out.  If you can identify the compartments in your life, you can tailor multiple online identities to allow you to segregate your contacts.  I have three separate Twitter accounts, two Yahoo identities, and manage three different websites; all done in an effort to keep everyone in their own tidy little compartment.  My professional life, my closed personal life, and my semi-public personas all have their own outlets.

This isn’t to say that information is never shared between them, in fact many times I paste the same tweet to each group.  Also, there are some people who know about multiple feeds and subscribe to more than one.  My primary reason for compartmentalization is to separate my professional/academic life from my social life, and having multiple identities has become the simplest solution.

Deciding to split your personalities after the fact is much more challenging though, especially once you’ve already built a robust network of followers.  For a public persona, you’ll want to leave the follow feature as open as possible so anyone can join without you having to constantly review and approve their requests.  For the more private self, you’ll want to maintain as much control and privacy as possible.  The problems are the people who are on the fence; the friends who are too close to just be professional, but not quite family.  How do you tell someone you don’t want to friend them on Facebook when you have a close rapport with them in real life?

This is where the digital life collides with the psychology of relationships, and where this post ends.  Online or offline, personal or professional, we need to manage all of our relationships with care.  It’s too easy to forget that behind the bits and bytes on your screen are real people with real feelings.  The best way to build lasting relationships in the real world is through honesty and respect, and we should strive to remember that in the digital realm the same ethos applies.

Feel free to add comments on how you might have encountered some of the problems illustrated here, and how you may have found ways to solve them!!