The Superficiality and Profundity of Social Media

Is social media superficial, or is there depth to it?

This topic came up in a conversation I had with a good friend of mine (just last night at dinner, actually). We were talking about our differences in communication, noting that he takes several paragraphs to write what he has to say, while I tend to write less than two (if I'm lucky). My reasoning is that I just get straight to the point and do not flower what I have to say. His reasoning is that he has more profound things to say and joked that I was more of the superficial, "social media" type.

I laughed at his "social media" type comment, but then I thought about it again. I really don't think that the amount of words you take to express something insinuates one's level of depth. My friend disagrees. He argued, "You're involved in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, you have a blog, all these social media sites that really don't express thoughts and ideas profoundly. It's all superficial to me."

I gave his arguments some thought before I retorted, "Of course you can express every thought and emotion through social media! If you're willing to share with the public and express yourself to complete strangers (and friends who follow you), people pour out their souls to anyone who wants or cares to listen! And so what if you can only type 140 characters in a Tweet? I bet you can get to the point a lot quicker than taking a page to say what you have to say." Take that!

This conversation reminded me a little of Malcolm Gladwell's book called Blink, where people make quick judgments based on long term experiences. So is social media just an avenue for people to express these "blink"-like thoughts and ideas? I think there is room for both.

But what I want to investigate is, to what extent are people willing to express themselves on social media sites? What and how much are they willing to share? Is there a particular social media network that people feel more comfortable being 'superficial' or more 'profound' on?

This topic is of great interest to me, not only because I am an advertising student and I am particularly interested in social media use and the psychology behind human behavior, but because this topic can tell us something about the way in which individuals have changed because of communication technologies. With the advent of the Internet, are humans becoming more liberal about who we publicly share information with?

This research topic connects to the gathering and identification of customer insights and the design of valuable customer experiences by attempting to understand people's thought processes in why they provide information, to whom and through what social medium. Are Twitter, Facebook, Blogspot.com and LinkedIn designed to cater to a particular audience? It seems that way, but the demographics seem to overlap (i.e. Facebook users using LinkedIn, or Twitter users writing in blogs). What do social media users think of social media networks and why do they use them? What are they sharing? What does mean for consumer research for media conglomerates?

Helen Raptoplous's Social Media Offers Profound Opportunities for Great Relationships article illustrates, well, just that. She contends that social media offers individuals to connect with other liked-minded people with a shared interest and build relationships around that. She further argues, "By sitting in your home or office and logging online you can meet people from all walks of life from all over the planet." Communication and thus connection transcends both geographical and time-based boundaries.

Contrary to Raptoplous's belief, Bryan Foster writes in Social Networking Sites May Cause the i-Generation to Become Superficial that the "...young people, the i-generation, have developed a superficial appreciation of world events, news and other important formation details, through considerable use of social networking sites." He argues that Twitter is merely one culprit behind people's lack of depth and emotion in communicating with others.

The Superficiality of Social Media by Seattle Rex illustrates the lack of depth social media seems to provide, describing social media as "the art of the con." He further argues that "Social media is taking terms that used to be reserved for the select few, and is applying them to anyone and everyone that seeks the label on even the most cursory level." From this perspective, people hold very few strong ties (since our brain can only manage 150 relationships at a time).

The concept of strong vs. weak ties is no stranger to communication studies. Several researchers, including Hanneman, Granovetter, Bian, Wellman and McPherson, have explored the implications of strong and weak ties in social networks. Martin Ruef of Strong Ties, Weak Ties and Islands argues that although weak ties are useful for information dissemination, the strong ties of trust and obligation may be more beneficial in relation to influence (which is both costly and difficult to acquire). There is, in fact, a difference in how and why people connect with each other. Does this effect the flow of information? Are people more willing to share profound ideas with strong ties than weak ones?

I'm sure many of you have seen the Social Media Revolution YouTube video (if not, then click the link!). There is now a second video, "Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh)" that is out and I want to share with you. Where is social media headed? Are we headed towards superficiality or profundity? Whether you want to answer this in a Tweet with 140 characters or an essay-long response in a blog post, that's for you to decide!