Sometimes people have secrets, ones in which they feel as though they cannot tell their family and friends face-to-face. While people like to bash social media for being too time-consuming, since its more frequent use among teenagers and young adults, it has also become a place where people can share important parts of their life without having to face the immediate reaction of the people they love.
This past week, I happened to be on Twitter when a gentleman from Washington, D.C decided to share something that he hadn’t told anyone since it happened 18 years ago. After reading all of the tweets, I was full of emotion in disbelief that he had kept such a thing in, something that resulted in the end of a one and a half year marriage and four-year relationship. “Ok, got that off my chest. Again, thanks for listening,” he tweeted after sharing his story.
What followed his concluding tweet was heart-warming: many people who had read the story thanked him for sharing it. One man tweeted, “Thanks for telling this story, man. Powerful and important. I hate that this happened.” If Twitter was not around today, this man could’ve kept this experience bottled in for much longer, without having fully talked about it. He had told his family what happened, but not entirely like he was able to through social media.
Over the past few years, people have been revealing very personal events through Facebook. One of the best advantages with Facebook in this way, is that users have the option to control who sees what they post. Therefore, they feel comfort in letting secrets out because they do not have to deal with the possible lack of support from their parents and instead they are free to be exposed to the support of close friends and other family members.
Facebook also helps with spreading awareness. For a couple of years, people have been recording “I have a secret…” videos where one reveals an important secret using notecards. These secrets can range from rape to domestic abuse. While the videos are continuously shared through social media, they do not only make room for continuous support of strangers but they also spread awareness of the serious topics as well.
The absence of social media would allow for these secrets to possibly consume a person from the inside out. It is hard to explain, but there is a level of comfort that comes with being able to get things off your chest without having to see the physical/emotional reaction of the person you told. It also gives them a chance to decide when they want to reveal these things to people whom they could only imagine would not understand in the way they would like them to.
With the theoretical absence of social media, where would those people be today?
Note: Certain matters of the twitter story remained private because it was not my place to reveal them.
