To Post or Not to Post?

And why 'digital modesty' is my new favourite term.

A friend of mine had a baby over a year ago, and unless you talked to her or saw her on a regular basis, you wouldn’t know. Even though she uses Instagram regularly, she hasn’t posted a single photo of her baby on social media, not even the slightest hint or snippet of evidence that she produced a tiny human. I didn’t even know she was pregnant until she invited me to a baby shower. “Whose is it?” I asked, cluelessly. “Mine,” she texted back.

Contrast that to another approach, which is to have a baby and post every detail of pre- and postnatal life online. There are babies within my broader social circle whose feeding and sleeping routines I’m well acquainted with. I know what meals the mothers had that day, how many hours of sleep they got, how breastfeeding is going, which diaper or nipple cream they like best—and where “you can buy it, too, using this special discount code!” Every single detail, big or small, is offered up to the Internet.

In observing these radically different approaches, I’ve realized that (a) I have a great deal of respect for the former, and (b) I am intensely uncomfortable with the latter. Regardless of parental status, the less someone posts online, the more I automatically assume (rightly or wrongly) that they have it all together and are sufficiently self-confident not to need to post to prove they’re doing cool, interesting things. The more someone posts, the more I assume (again, rightly or wrongly) that they are seeking validation or that they’re bored or lonely.

I recognize that these are sweeping generalizations that do not apply to every situation; but lately, I have been trying to analyze my gut reactions to social media posts, instead of just scrolling past and ignoring the feeling of unease that comes over me after a few too many minutes on Instagram. I have been trying to get at the root of what bothers me, and I think it’s that oversharing—about oneself, one’s children, one’s spouse, one’s friends and acquaintances—appears to cheapen those relationships.

There are times when I sit and watch the Instagram stories roll past, while yelling inside my head, “No! Stop! Don’t do this to yourself (or child/partner/friend)! Argh, I can’t believe you’re doing this! Can’t you see? This is not going to end well!”

At the same time, I am watching, which means I’m participating in and, one might say, even perpetuating the very thing I’m criticizing. (Yes, I feel guilty.) But it feels a lot like a car crash in slow motion, horrifying yet compelling, impossible to tear one’s gaze away. There’s an overpowering urge to see how it’s going to play out, to see just how bad it can get.

There is a sense that nothing is private, nothing is off-limits anymore. And if everything is up for grabs, if everything is fodder for social media posts, then how does anyone know what’s real anymore? When every single scene, conversation, celebration, activity, and purchase can be coopted to fuel views and grow one’s personal brand, what is truly spontaneous or authentic or special? There’s a sense that beautiful human relationships—the most important thing in our lives—are being auctioned off for pennies, without a thought spared for the long-term effects on everyone involved.

A friend once told me about the sense of betrayal she felt when, after having a long, deep, philosophical conversation with someone, the details of it were posted online the following day. The intent was not malicious—the other person was an influencer of sorts and saw the potential of the material she’d collected—but my friend said she wondered if the whole thing had been staged.

“It felt real at the time,” she added, sadly.

What Does Constant Posting Do to Us?

By posting profligately and engaging in what UK writer Mary Harrington has described colourfully as “pornography of the self”, I think that parents seriously underestimate its effect on their children. I fear that, within a decade or two, there will be countless young adults who are deeply resentful of their parents for forcing them to grow up in public, on display, like accessories to a dog and pony show.

It reminds me of a twisted version of Rumpelstiltskin, offering up the firstborn child as payment for spinning straw into gold; or a deep-sea trawler that drags its net along the bottom of the ocean floor to gather coveted shrimp, while generating huge quantities of bycatch in the process.

Sure, you may get followers and views and engagement and sponsorship deals, but at the cost of your child’s privacy? Just because you have the tremendous privilege of raising a child does not mean you have the right to sell off their childhood and identity in the process.

I think, too, that extravagant posters vastly underestimate the benevolence of the Internet. The Internet is cruel. It is scathing in its judgments, unforgiving of mistakes, merciless with its punishments. The more you give it, the more it will demand, and the deeper you will need to dig to satisfy it—and you never will. To quote Harrington, “Once such material is a source of income and professional clout, the disclosures have to keep coming. The machine always wants more.”

Haters can be found everywhere, but they’re concentrated online, their voices amplified. Exposing yourself to judgment and attack, day after day, can’t help but take its toll. You might grow a thick skin, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. There’s an aloofness, a hardening of oneself, an embitterment that occurs when you spend most of your time in defence mode. You’ll start to think the worst of the world because that’s what you see, all the time. That is no way to live a life.

Over time, it can change who you are. You will lose sight of who you are in the endless race to contort yourself into what you think fickle viewers may want to see. This affects women, in particular. As Harrington told Freya India in an interview:

“[Women] are socialized from a young age to see ourselves always somewhat through the eye of the Other. This habit makes the digital culture of transparency especially dangerous for us—because if you’re being encouraged to make yourself completely transparent online, you are in danger of viewing yourself only ever through the third-party perspective, and trying to evacuate your inner life accordingly. The promise is agency, but the reality is a kind of half-life, as a pixellated puppet.”

What Can We Do?

You could just get off social media completely. There’s a new movement called Appstinent.org that reminds young people that social media is optional. (The tag line reads, “Why isn’t anyone telling us this?”)

Many people are choosing to post less or not at all. Within my own small Instagram circle, I’ve observed anecdotally a rough split into two groups, posters versus viewers. A small proportion of users provide most of the content for a large number of viewers to consume passively. And while the posters might think they’re doing good work, I suspect they underestimate how critical and disapproving viewers can be. Selfies, in particular, seem to be loathed by many and frequently used as a springboard for others’ assumptions and discussions.

Anne Helen Peterson, creator of Culture Study, identifies a sort of posting fatigue, induced by constantly changing platforms and rules and trends. But it goes beyond that. “It’s more than just fatigue. People seem to be grappling with a more fundamental question: Does posting add more to my life than it extracts?”

And then she adds later, “How do you live a digital life whose primary byproduct isn’t resentment? The most straightforward way: You stop posting. You leave the party.” But not everyone wants to leave the party—at least, not yet—though there is a very fine line between “I can’t imagine going” and “I can’t believe I took so long.”

My preferred approach comes from Mary Harrington, again, who proposes a term so smart, succinct, and obvious that I really wish I’d coined it myself. The term is digital modesty. She writes:

“This [word] should be understood in a much broader context than showing skin or behaving in an overtly sexual way. Digital modesty is a general disposition: an effort, however difficult it is in practice, to avoid any form of online self-presentation that veers into spectacle.”

Digital modesty informs her own personal posting guidelines: No pictures of child or husband. No selfies. No discussion of any interpersonal relationship without the other party’s explicit consent. Pictures of friends only in professional settings. Self-disclosure only in the context of wider argument. With this philosophy, you can still participate in the realm of social media, but you hold yourself at a distance.

I grapple with this in the context of my own work. Writing about kids and screen time, I can’t help but bring in my own experiences as a mother. But I’m also acutely aware that I don’t want to use my children in the process. I have the right to disclose lessons I’ve learned, but I need to tread carefully, so as not to divulge any information that might make my kids resentful or feel like a betrayal of their privacy. I continue to move cautiously, learning as I go.

When it comes to social media, the goal should not be “openness,” “transparency,” or “authenticity.” Those are at odds with the inherently performative nature of such huge public platforms. Instead, one should strive for deliberate occlusion, a conscious choice to preserve certain scenes, images, experiences, and relationships for the people who participate in them.

Not everything needs to be witnessed by the harsh, unforgiving eye of the Internet, and by reclaiming dominion over our own lives, we end up enriching ourselves and our relationships. It’s also a profound act of respect for the people we care for most.

You Might Also Like:

• Don’t Be a Digiphrenic

• Does It Need to Be Said?

• Fix Your Analog Life First

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