At times, social media can be very beneficial. It allows you to showcase your personality, work, or share exciting news with family and friends you don’t speak to frequently. Other times, social media can be annoying with the number of posts thrown at you, specifically the ones about someone’s personal life. These posts range from that friend from high school who you haven’t spoken to since you graduated years ago bashing their boyfriend who just cheated on them for the eleventh time to the classmate from college constantly complaining about not having a man. While these posts give us all a great laugh or a screenshot to send to your friends in your group chat, the question that rises is, “Why are they always putting their business on social media?”
Social media has become so important over the past couple of years that people have lost the art of privacy. It’s understandable to want to be more open and share some aspects of your personal life, but as you mature, somethings you share need to become private. As much as you want to share your world with everyone, it’s not always the best idea. We add fuel to the fire with the information we share and are forced to deal with the repercussions. We all say we don’t care about what others think of us, but deep down we do.
It is important to think before you post. Choose wisely on what you should and shouldn’t share. Here’s a list of things of you should not share on social media:
Drama (between family, friends, significant others, etc.)
Airing your falling out with a family member, friend, or arguing with your significant other on social media is a huge no-no. Whatever happened needs to stay between both parties and should be addressed away from the public. Letting your friends and followers in on the drama is wrong and causes outsiders to become involved, choose sides, and get a bad perception of you. When this happens, you open yourself up to the opinion of others. It only ends up doing more damage than good and makes it harder for you to forgive. Be mature and keep the drama in-house.
Personal business
Social media isn’t a place where you should share your personal business. Your friends and followers don’t need to know you how you feel about your crazy ex-boyfriend or your sexual encounter from the night before. Personal business is personal for a reason. It’s not meant to be shared with the world. Find you some friends that will let you rant and vent about the things going on in your life. They can provide you honest feedback and insight on how to approach personal situations. Your friends will understand more than that one follower who liked your picture and see in person but don’t speak to.
Big purchases (house, car, shoes, etc.)
We all get super excited when we are blessed enough to purchase our own house, car, or the shoes everybody wanted but couldn’t get. Because we get so excited our first thing to do is share it on social media. We want our friends and followers to know we have made a big step into adulthood, that we worked hard, and paid for something we really wanted. But by doing this, we allow people to pass judgment. Sometimes you can’t let everyone know about your blessings. Instead, let people find out about your glow up when they see you. Let them be shocked in front of you not behind closed doors.
Your relationship
Proceed with caution when sharing your significant other on social media. Don’t share everything about your relationship because it isn’t everyone’s business. What you go through, whether bad or good, should only be shared and figured out between the two of you. Having too many eyes and ears in your relationship, especially from social media, is toxic and does more harm than good. Keeping your relationship private assures the two of you are about each other and not the validation from others. If you decide to share your relationship anyway, know that there are consequences to sharing intimate details about your relationship on social media. You may not see it now because you’re in love and you just have to let people know that you’re in a relationship. Realize, if it does blow over and the two of you break-up, it will be harder for you to pick up the pieces and move on. The most successful relationships happen when you grow and love in private. That’s real #relationshipgoals.
Your relationship status
Sharing your relationship status is one of the main things you shouldn’t do. If you spend almost all of your time on social media complaining about the fact that you’re not in a relationship, know that your entire timeline is rolling their eyes at you. We all know you are only constantly talking about being single so someone will respond and tell you what you want to hear. It’s not cute. It makes you sound desperate for attention and opens up the potential for the next person you are involved with to take advantage of you. Keep your feelings off social media and take it to your girlfriends. They’ll give you more answers than the “friends” and followers who don’t really know you. Also, if you and the person you are “talking” to are not official DON’T share details or a picture of them on your social media. It won’t push them to make it official, it will push them away. As stated in the previous point, grow and get to know each other in private. Surprise the world when it actually becomes official.
You don’t need to tell everyone every little thing you do, every emotion you feel, or everything that’s going on in your life. Remain mysterious. Shine and move in silence. You will be blessed even if the world never sees or hears about it.