4 social media pitfalls for communicators

We are rerunning the most-viewed articles of 2019. This was one of the top five most-popular social media articles of the year.

Twitter is making us bitter.

YouTube’s killing the written word. Instagram is making the masses envious, vain and image-obsessed. Facebook is, uh, taking over the world?

That’s probably overstating things a bit. However, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the role social media plays in all our lives.

How much time do we spend on these sites? How many hours per week do we mindlessly scroll, searching for something—anything—to stimulate our addled minds? Why do we let the words of internet dingbats send us into a furious, tree-chopping rage?

This isn’t one of those “Old man yells at digital cloud” posts that encourages everyone to just log off forever. It is, however, a call for communicators to be more intentional, thoughtful and circumspect about the weight and mental freight these platforms put on our heads.

Keep an eye out for these four pitfalls in particular:

1. Comparing careers and life achievements