For a great majority of people, social media has really changed so many aspects of daily life. As technology continues to advance around us, we have more and more opportunities to access so many ways to be social. With a few keystrokes, you can share everything from those mundane things that people never knew (and probably didn’t care to know), as well as revealing that important and serious news that used to be handled more personally. Where do you draw the line on what you share on social media, and what is best handled face-to-face or through person-to-person communication?
A recent NY Times posting covers various angles in the discussion of sharing bad news via outlets like Facebook, versus the time honored personal approach. In the past, bad news was usually reserved for personal one-on-one communication, whether by phone or in person. It just seems too weighty, personal and general bad etiquette to broadcast such news any other way. Daniel Post Senning, an etiquette author and spokesman for the Emily Post Institute said, “Really significant news is best delivered face to face, but sometimes speed is the concern. We’ve definitely crossed a threshold in how we use social media.”
Using Facebook in this manner can be beneficial for the user, because it changes the presentation scenario. No longer does it require multiple phone calls, and telling the same story over and over while being in such an emotional state of mind. Doug Anter posted news of his father’s death, saying “I could have made countless phone calls, but it was incredibly inefficient, and I would be getting very emotional each time.” Plus, it can make things a bit easier on the recipients, who are often caught off guard and not sure how to respond to such news immediately. One of those who was interviewed stated, “One of the beautiful things about Facebook is that it’s passive communication, and it gives people freedom to respond — or not — in whichever way they are most comfortable.”
Many people get thrown off when seeing such bad news because the current Facebook vocabulary of the “Like” button seems an inappropriate response to someone’s bad news. “Hey, my dad died” – LIKE! People need to come to terms with the language and understand that the “Like” option is merely showing you have read the news, and acknowledged your support during this terrible time. I fully understand that idea, but still to this day have that split-second odd feeling when I hit LIKE on someone’s bad news.
Dr. Carole Lieberman, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist disagrees with using social media in this manner. “If you post about someone’s death or your divorce, it’s not that different from typing, ‘I’m going to Starbucks,’ it’s trying to show bravado, and pretending that you’re not devastated by the news. It isn’t good because if you don’t feel the feelings, it interferes with your grief.” I am not sure I agree with her, as I personally posted the news of a death in my immediate family, and I chose to do so on Facebook at the time, mainly for the initial reasons above. For me, it was a way to get it “out there” without having to relive it over and over as I told each new person. Pretty much everyone I know, local or not, is on there, so it was a quick way to spread the word, and eliminate much more grief on my part. A week later I wrote an extensive, detailed blog posting of the event, and to this day, I send people to that for details, to avoid the heartache of recalling and explaining it to someone. She also commented that “it is very human, very real and you have to deal with your feelings.” Maybe that is true, maybe it is not. Using social media to broadcast bad news is still a fairly new thing, so it is probably too early to draw such conclusions of which way is better.
It seems more and more new technologies are created to make our lives easier, and more expedient. Maybe this new form of mass social media communication of even the worst news is a way of reaching more people in a shorter time frame, and allowing both parties in the scenario a bit more time to gather their thoughts and prepare better responses. “From a cognitive perspective, it’s easier to deal with it this way. You post it, come back in eight hours and read all the comments that you get, and don’t have to worry about having a difficult conversation,” states Dr. Louis Manza, a Lebanon Valley College profession and chairman of the psychology department. That holds true for my experience.
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