Transparency Item: The Perspectives section of the Graphic is comprised of articles based on opinion. This is the opinion and perspective of the writer.
The widespread use of the internet has become a defining element of the 21st century. A subset of social media users have turned their accounts into a career, promoting their carefully curated images, personalities and artwork to audiences.
The standard social media user is not an influencer; rather, social media’s purpose for the average individual seems to be the facilitation of connection. Posting content and engaging with other people’s content can be a way for people to maintain otherwise tenuous relationships as well as assert control over what the public thinks about them and their lives.
This element of the internet is not necessarily bad, but I think it has generated a level of pressure on everyday people to share their lives online, which is evident in research suggesting that over half of young adults would find it difficult to stop using social media. Not only is it normal to create platforms for oneself, there is also the game of attracting the desirable amount of viewers, the number of which seems to operate as a marker for somebody’s beauty, talent or likability.
I think creative people can be especially drawn to this world of online content creation. YouTube, for example, has for years been a platform for people to share what they love to do and see if anybody stumbles across it.
It’s a natural impulse to share passions with other people. I’m of the opinion that it’s actually one of humanity’s better qualities; when something brings me happiness, I tend to want to share it with as many people as I can.
But there can be a lot of value in creating photos, stories, art, music and videos that will never be shared. Maintaining hobbies without an audience to see it might seem lonely or pointless, but the benefits of this kind of privacy are not to be overlooked.
In keeping hobbies more personal, the validation of others becomes less necessary. Artistic integrity does not need to be compromised for the sake of cultivating an image, and the final product will not be influenced by either flattery or criticism.
I also don’t think that documenting experiences is a bad thing. However, social media has perhaps made it difficult to document daily experiences without immediately jumping to share them with others online.
As a college student, there are a few home videos from my household that my family can look back on now and then. It makes me happy to look back on certain memories with my family and get to see moments I would have otherwise forgotten.
And one of the most interesting things I noticed about these videos is how unpolished they were. They were not taken for public consumption; instead, they captured moments of my family’s past as they were, not as we wish they had been.
Lately, I have been making more of an effort to document my experiences without being motivated by the purpose of sharing them. I have also always been fairly reserved about sharing creative outlets with others, and I find it has given me a lot of freedom to grow and evolve in that way.
If I do decide to share something I have documented or written, I often opt to share it with people who are close to me or whose feedback I highly value. This allows me to receive constructive advice without the pressure of strangers’ perceptions as well as gain insight into the perspective of a reader rather than a writer.
There is no pressure for me to create something “good.” All I have to do is create the thing, and the only judgment I have to consider is my own.
Allowing myself the option of being bad or mediocre at something makes it easier to view my hobbies without any sense of pressure or inadequacy. I also appreciate that I do not feel as if I owe an audience, big or small, a constant stream of high-quality content.
And sharing passions or creative outlets online is also more vulnerable than I think me and most people give it credit for. So the impulse to be cautious about sharing work is as understandable as the impulse to share it with others.
Taking this into consideration, sending work into the void can be very courageous; it’s admirable to develop the ability to be vulnerable without caring too much about what others think, and there’s a lot of emotional risk in doing so. It’s also OK to not want to be put at that kind of emotional risk, and instead keep the important things personal.
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Contact Alyssa Johnson via email: alyssa.johnson@pepperdine.edu
