Social media may be making us better people
Posting relatable feelings, kindness nudges, rules videos, and countering a rise in emotional inequality
đŁÂ An aura of relatability
Maybe youâve noticed them too? Accounts that post concise bits of benevolent validation, or as Kaitlyn Tiffany writes in The Atlantic, âlittle snippets of language with mass appeal.â Itâs been a minute but you probably remember the tweet trope of âSheâs a 10 butâ as a treasure trove of relatable feelings reposted ad infinitum by basically everyone and, it turns out, especially by what Tiffany calls gradient accounts.
Rather than a typical profile pic, the hallmark of these accounts is a color gradient. Not to nitpick, but I thought these were auras. At least thatâs what my coolier-than-moi teenagers told me. And the posts certainly exude an ~aura~ of relatability.
If you thought they were bots, itâs no wonder. There are plenty of bots that tweet sweet nothings to soothe the soul like Emoji Meadow or Tiny Care Bot. But these gradient accounts are mostly real people posting relatable feelings. The best gradient tweets are the ones that acknowledge our complicated feelings.
Anyway, the gig may be up. All the accounts referenced in the article published just a week ago are now suspended. Twitter, according to Twitter, is on the outs or, at least, very worried that El*n M*sk will sink (haha) the social network. Expect a vibe shift but, you know, with auras.
Me trying to explain how I feel about Twitter:
đ Nudging your way to nice
Meanwhile, Instagram is quietly nudging everyone to be kinder (rather than relying on generic gradients and benevolent bots). To counter harassment, the app is rolling out features that will remind you to be nice when you message a creator (with more than 10K followers) or when you reply to a comment thread by displaying a reminder to be respectful.
While nudging isnât a panacea for the platformâs problems, subtle interventions can curb cruel instincts. According to Meta, about half the people who received a reminder reconsidered. The effect goes behind just preventing an offensive post once in a while. Itâs reduced the proportion of hurtful comments over time too which is especially important considering that creators face disproportionate harassment. This latest feature is aimed not just at people who post an offensive comment but at people who reply with a âhahaâ or a tears-of-joy emoji to a hateful post.
The nudges counter the online disinhibition effect, the idea that people show less restraint on the internet because they feel anonymous. Instagramâs global head of product policy, Liz Arcamona, wants to remind us that thereâs a human on the other side of the screen.
âWhen youâre in an offline interaction, you see peopleâs responses, you kind of read the room. You feel their emotions. I think you lose a lot of that oftentimes in an online context.â
In other words, itâs easy to forget that there are real humans with real feelings that will be hurt when youâre online. A gentle reminder is sometimes all thatâs needed to build empathy.
đ Outward rules for our inner psyches
Gen Z is learning a lot from each other and from experts on TikTok. Mental health, emotional regulation, and now social etiquette as reported in Mashable. This latest trend consists of a list of rules, usually as a screenshot from the Notes app. There are rules for a first date, rules for back to school, rules for friendship and even rules for liking yourself more.
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With boundaries blurred between online and offline, itâs hard to know how to interact in particular circumstances, whatâs appropriate when connecting with others, and how close a relationship really is. If you think of rule videos as etiquette guides, you can read this trend as a signal of social transformation. According to influential German sociologist Norbert Elias, etiquette guides are part of The Civilizing Process that helps us to internalize self-restraint and navigate increasingly complex networks of social connections.
Iâd add that it shows a progression too. Just a couple of years ago, we started to be more considerate of each other by adding trigger warnings to shared content, attempting to be less ostentatious about our good fortune (in some circles!), and becoming more generous with our support.
đ The connection between social media and connection
Gallup released another emotion-adjacent study, The State of Social Connections, to understand how connected people feel to each other, who they are connecting with, and how they maintain those connections. The results might be surprising in an era when you read how disconnected we are from each other.
Half of the 2000 people interviewed felt âveryâ or âfairlyâ connected to others. What does that mean? Gallup defines this as âhow close you feel to people emotionallyâ which, I think, makes it even more powerful than simply âbeing connectedâ to people especially. online. Over 60% of the participants in the 7 countries studied (Brazil, Egypt, France, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and the United States) connect with mostly friends and family in two or more waysâincluding in-person contact, voice calls, video calls, email, text messages, social media and gaming.
Social media was one of the most popular ways people forged that connection, although in-person and voice calls were still the main way people reached out for support. Considering that human connection is the underpinning of wellbeing and mental health, itâs kind of incredible that there hasnât been a big study that tries to understand just how people maintain those ties. Gallup has a larger study planned for 2023 and Iâd hope to see this move to their regular rotation.
âď¸ Countering a rise in emotional inequality
Gallupâs new book, Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It, suggests that global wellbeing and especially emotional wellbeing )which often is not the focus on Global Happiness Reports) is a better indicator of global change than the GDP. What they see in their global emotion research is a rise in emotional inequalityâa small percentage of people are getting happier and a larger percentage is getting sadder, angrier, and more stressed.
Social media can exacerbate that sadness and anger or be a salve for it. Perhaps we can get better (with a little help from artificial intelligence) at identifying the emotive words that signal depression. While we know we are likely to be happier if we are more conversational on social media (remember, last week?) passive use has value too. Social media observers are actually better at reading social cues than active users. Thereâs still a lot to learn but clearly social media can be a positive force for emotional wellbeing.
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Thatâs all the feels for this week!
xoxo
Pamela đ