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Social Media Theory

By On · 3 Comments · In AM:PM PR

The funny thing about social media is that it starts out as a way to chronicle your life, but it ends up changing the way you live it.

Quantum Theory states that by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality. Social Media Theory, then, as I’ll postulate it, states that by the very act of reporting your behavior to an outside source – Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc. – you can’t help but shape the behavior you’re reporting.

If you doubt this, consider the status updates you type into Facebook. Rarely do they include entries like “Did my laundry today. Always thought ring around the collar was a made-up condition. Not anymore.”

Usually, when you share a tidbit via Facebook or any other social media platform, it’s something you actually want others to know about you. In this way, you allow the perception of your observers, or friends, to dictate the behavior you report.

In fact, the very act of typing a status update or tweet into your computer or smart phone is an alteration of your life as you would normally live it. Sometimes, these updates are typed during moments of repose, but often they’re sent in the middle of the workday or while you’re frolicking your way through weekend activities. In order to report what you’re doing, you have to take a moment out to do so. It’s like texting in the middle of a conversation, and the vector you resume said exchange on is never be the one you left off on.

Now, let’s take this theory a step further. With Foursquare, you’re actually reporting your location in real time. While some people will report any and everything they do in order to earn points and badges, others might balk at reporting that they went to a gas station, a convenience store or anywhere else that doesn’t strike them as “high profile” enough. Others might avoid checking-in while at a strip club or police station. Perhaps all this will change when Foursquare introduces a Vice Cop badge.

Until then, people have to decide when they will or won’t check-in for themselves as individuals. For me, checking-in on Foursquare has actually further affected my behavior to the point where I’ll change my plans just so that I can check-in.

To earn my Gym Rat badge, I found a way to make it to Allstar Fitness once more each week. To earn my Barista badge, I went out of my way to go to a new Starbucks every time I grabbled coffee (not that this was hard in downtown Portland).

To earn my School Night Badge, I picked a Thursday night that I knew I could sleep in the next day to check-in after 3 a.m. That backfired when Twitter shut down for maintenance at 3, and I had to wait until 3:45 to actually check-in.

All this begs the question, how accurate is our representation of ourselves when the very medium we use to communicate causes us to alter our behavior? Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but it seems like a good way to keep myself honest.

Or at least more honest than I’d otherwise be.



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  • http://www.eriktimmons.com Erik Timmons

    Remember when you were in Jr. High and you HAD to have just the right hairstyle before you would go to school. You spent all kinds of time getting ready so that people saw you the way YOU wanted them to see you. For me it was the mullet.

    Anyway, I think our behavior is definitely altered due to the way we want ourselves to be represented. BEFORE Jr. High I couldn’t care less about how my hair looked but all of a sudden I cared what people thought. I altered my behavior.

    It’s the same in social media. I don’t check in EVERYWHERE I go, only places I WANT people to know I went to. Did you know on Foursquare you can check in "off the grid". Why would they have that option if people didn’t want to mask where they are going and only show certain places. I don’t want people to think (fill in the blank) if I check in here.

    Right?

    Good post.

  • Jennifer Joan Nelson

    An interesting argument, for sure. But do social medias actually alter our day-to-day behavior, or do they simply force us to craft what we own up to? Surely, we’re all still doing laundry, going to the gym, etc. Perhaps one of the reasons we don’t update our friends on these events is because they’re extraneous to the medium (at least to me; I sadly have many friends who feel the need to update the world on the mundane realities of their daily lives). I like to think of social networking as a party, and these days (read: Facebook) the party feels a little too big for it’s own good. People with interesting ideas and observations to share are the ones I want to be "drinking" with. And if that number is small, well, it only goes to show the limits of certain imaginations (and frankly, social networking itself).

  • Jake Ten Pas

    Wait, Eric, did I go to middle school with you? Because it’s like you were THERE. I guess maybe all middle schools were the same in some ways. In terms of checking in "off the grid," I think it can serve a variety of purposes. Perhaps people are worried about avoiding stalkers. Or they don’t want you to know they’re at a head shop or an "adult store.’ It gets even more complex when you have your Foursquare tied into your Twitter or Facebook. One of my coworkers was recently mortified when she checked in at a Shell station, and it broadcast it across a variety of social media, as if she was so proud to be buying gas that she was shouting it to the world.

    JJN: Completely agree with everything you say. Nobody needs to know that you’re making a sandwich, unless of course you cut the tip of your finger off, have to drive yourself to the hospital and end up running over the last North American Spotted Owl on the way. Or, if you can describe that sandwich in a way that makes your follower salivate and inspires them to try making it at home, as your tweets do. The trick with social media is that it doesn’t simply serve as entertainment, but also as a means of networking, staying in touch with friends around the world, etc. Sometimes, as you say, our friends don’t post interesting content, but we don’t want to unfollow or block them because that would just be rude. As to whether these platforms alter our day-to-day behavior, or just how we display that behavior to the spheres of our world, that’s a good question. Sometimes, if I’m walking around downtown Portland (or Hawthorne or Mississippi or St. Johns), I’ll stop by a record store that I stopped by less than a week before even though I know the used selection hasn’t changed significantly in that time span because I want to maintain my mayorship. Shallow, I know. Sometimes I’m surprised that something new is there, and I buy it. In this way, Foursquare affected both my behavior and, to some extent, the local economy. That is a specific example, but I bet that as social media infects more parts of our lives, it will continue to alter our behavior in subtle but noticeable ways.

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