A couple of months back, I read an article by Eugene Wei that I came across on Twitter. It spoke about social networks providing StaaS, or, Status as a Service.
In short, it talks about the ubiquity of technology, the prevalence of social media in our everyday lives, and people be “status-seeking monkeys” constantly looking for ways to build up their social capital. When I saw the article, Instagram influencers were in the process of losing their minds over the “likes” playing field being levelled due to some testing. Now, Joe Blow with 11 likes on his picture will have his posts look the same as Kylie Jenner’s – the number of likes are private, and the functionality shows just one username, followed by “and others.”
Personally, I thought this was great. I found it was becoming less and less about the content being shared, and more about the number of likes that the content would generate. If you’re not getting 100 likes on your selfie, time to delete and re-post, right? That might sound crazy to some people reading this but to others, this is something they’ve done time and time again.
I want to stop harping on Instagram, since this StaaS notion applies to all social networks. I recently deactivated my Facebook account, and have just kept Messenger. I can honestly say that I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. I was getting sick of all of the statuses, people asking for recommendations, and the tedious task of choosing how to react to these posts – so I just took myself out of the running. I told myself that I needed to stay on Facebook to keep in touch with people and have an easy way to bring people together for events. However, before we had all of these push-button systems in place, we used to send a text message, and even before that, make a phone call. Foreign territory for “people in my generation” these days (which I can save for another blog post), but something that is still an effective means of communication.
For me, Twitter is the biggest grey area in terms of a social network. I’m big on engaging with news and other people’s content on there, but I don’t often create my own. When I don’t tweet, I don’t expect folks to interact, but it’s nice when they do. I expect more interaction on the two previously mentioned networks, just because they’re far more visual by design.
In closing, I’ll say that I do see the validity in looking at social networks as tools that provide Status as a Service. Inherently, the positive reactions we receive to whatever we choose to put out into the universe release dopamine in our brains and cause us to feel “happy.” We keep checking for those likes, comments, and retweets as a source of affirmation – whether we want to admit it or not. As we had to learn to integrate these things into our lives, we have to make a conscious effort to “unlearn” our reliance on them. Use the tools on your phone to curb your consumption, sleep with your phone outside of your room so it’s not the last thing you see at night or the first thing you pick up in the morning, spend more time outside, and leave your phone at home when you’re going out for a meal.
Be present.
Don’t just go to places because the interiors will look good on your Instagram. As there’s that saying that “no one on their deathbed says that they wish they spent more time at the office,” you shouldn’t wish that you had more time to scroll. Enjoy the people around you, and the authentic life that you share with them.
Khadijah Plummer Consulting 