Although social media give us the opportunity to reveal more information about ourselves, this can weaken interpersonal connections. Susan Greenfield, author of “Mind Change” is a big proponent of how social media is changing how we communicate and form relationships. She states that a “lack of face to face communication leads to a rise in self-disclosure, because we don’t have visual cues or access to the appropriate body language that may discourage us from self-disclosing or to make us second guess what we disclose.”(Greenfield). This shows how disclosing a large amount of information about ourselves can actually affect our relationships in a negative way. Although disclosing information is an important part of social media, many people find themselves doing it too much. Since body language that is normally present, such as short answers or a disinterest in the conversation by the other party, is not there to effect the person, they can continue to disclose an unnecessary or obnoxious amount of information. This can weaken relationships you have formed because this unlimited ability to disclose information makes some people seem self-obsessed or narcissistic. Social media scholar danah boyd also has some thoughts about how the disclosure of information on social media can lead to a weakening of interpersonal relationships. In her book “it’s complicated”, boyd explains how “switching contexts online is more challenging than doing so in the park because, in the park, “you can see when there’s people around you and stuff like that. So you can like quickly change the subject.” Online, there’s no way to change the conversation, both because it’s virtually impossible to know if someone is approaching and because the persistent nature of most social exchanges means that there’s a record of what was previously said.”(boyd). Here, boyd shows that our opportunity to disclose a lot of information can not only hurt us based on how much we disclose, but also who sees it. In the real world we can pivot our conversations and views based on who we are talking to. However, on social media, everyone can see what we are saying. This may lead to members of our audience thinking that we are not really who we say we are. Also, they may get offended, which could damage relationships that you have in the real world.
