We’ve Screwed Up Sharing

Sharing is a generous act. But social media has made it selfish.

As kids, we learned sharing was the act of giving something we had of value to others who would benefit from it. We shared to make others happy, help them, and make their life better.

Sharing was a virtue.

Now think about what sharing looks like on social media today.

We share for lots of reasons, but most have nothing to do with generosity.

We share to get attention, to get validation, to showcase our opinions, to make others jealous, to criticize, and of course we share to get “Likes.”

More often than not, our sharing is driven by our needs as opposed to the needs of the people we share with.

We’ve made sharing a selfish act.

Our social feeds are littered with things designed to fulfill the needs of the poster as opposed to the postee.

So, what can we do about it?

Not much. The genie is out of the bottle.

But here’s a small thing we can do.

We can use social media in a more generous way. Share things that provide value to those who follow us. Offer to help them. Ask them what they need.

There’s nothing wrong with sharing photos of your lunch or ranting about whatever random thing pissed you off today. That’s part of what makes the Internet the Internet.

And I LOVE the Internet.

But maybe, every once in a while, we can share something people actually value as well?

Let’s make sharing valuable again.

And as a first step, please only share this post with people you think will genuinely value it. Thanks.