"What's on Your Mind, Zak?" Like I'm Telling You, Facebook: Self-Image and Self-Censorship

I posted a question on my Facebook page recently. I wrote, “Just a survey question, not looking for a fight, but how many of you self censor your specifically political views on social media because you don't want to get into a public fight with people you care about?” The response was remarkable. People were commenting and liking my post with some very honest and thoughtful feedback. A friend of mine also borrowed my status, and he got tons of comments and reactions as well.

The vast majority of those who responded said that they indeed do censor themselves. There were some who said they don’t, but the vast majority, who I know are both on the left and the right, indicated that they don’t really want to have these fights on social media.

Many, myself included, have accused social media profiles of being the picture that you create of yourself that you want others to see. You cultivate a perfect life on Facebook, and you show the world that you are perfectly normal, perfectly put together, successful, and popular. It really doesn’t matter what is actually going on in your life, despite an interesting tendency to lionize those who are perceived as “authentic,” because you were able to put the right pictures and the right statuses online to show people that you are living the life that you want to live and they want.

I’m not going to lie. I have been there. I post things on Facebook that I know are going to get positive responses because I want the positive response. When I get a paper published, of course I mention that. Part of that is the image I want to portray; I am making progress towards the academic world I have always wanted to be a part of. Because I want that to be part of the way that people view me, of course that is part of the image I project on social media.

At the same time, I don’t post every time I am having a bad day. I don’t post every paper that gets rejected even though plenty of them have. I don’t post on Facebook when I get into a fight with someone or I worry that I have hurt someone. I don’t tell the world when I have failed as a Christian, which I have many times. I am just as guilty as anyone else of putting forward the image that I want people to see when they look at my Facebook profile.

And I don’t think I’m alone.

If that is the case, then social media brings out this tendency to craft our own self-image. As I mentioned in the title to this post, Facebook even provocatively asks me, “What’s on your mind, Zak?” The world wants to know what I think. Facebook wants to know what I think. And I want to tell the world what I think because that will contribute to the above goal of putting forward that image that I want to portray. I am smart, reasonable, successful, popular, and all kinds of other good things. Every post is an opportunity to make myself look good if we are being blunt about it.

The problem comes when I find things that are on my mind, and they are not what other people want to hear. Maybe your social network is much more of an echo chamber than mine is, but I have friends who have different views on just about every issue facing our country today. I know that if I post certain things, some people are going to be upset, and they will let me know it. Like many people responded when I posed this question, a lot of us like to avoid those conflicts. People have different reasons for doing so. Some are professional, some are personal, and some simply don’t think there’s much point in engaging people on social media because you aren’t going to change anyone’s minds that way. All three of these responses are understandable.

We then practice self-censorship. To avoid these conflicts, we simply don’t speak what is on our minds all the time. As it turns out, Facebook doesn’t seem to always want to know what is on my mind all the time (or maybe Facebook itself does to sell my data to the highest bidder, but many of my Facebook friends certainly do not). But that brings us to an uncomfortable position of anxiety. We like to use social media to put forward a certain image of ourselves, but the image that we are putting forward is a highly censored version of who we are. It is filtered through two layers of judgment. We remove anything that we are uncomfortable with in our lives. Then we remove anything from our social media profiles that those around us might be uncomfortable with.

What are we left with?

A lot of times, I hate to say it, the person on our social media profile is a very different person than the actual person that we are. Even without lying, and I don’t think that most people intentionally lie on these social networks, the person that people see when they look at my Facebook page is far from a complete picture of who I am. And I say this as someone who, in the past, has been quite a bit more open politically and has written some pretty provocative articles. If you want to find some things I have written, and I still stand behind, they are a Google search away. I don’t regret writing them or anything like that, but I say this as someone who has not traditionally been one to shy away from a good debate. Nevertheless, I find myself intentionally censoring myself because of the views of other people in a way that I have not done in the past. For people who have perhaps not been as open about sensitive issues in the past, maybe nothing has changed. Maybe you were feeling this pressure before, and I am just late to the party, or I just didn’t realize the tension back then. Maybe I have become more sensitive than I was.

All I know for certain is that I just don’t find myself up for the fight like I used to be. Maybe it is a very real specter of people getting fired for things that they say on social media that go against certain political perspectives. Extra caution seems warranted. Maybe I just want people to like me and know that I might have views that will make people literally not want to associate with me anymore. Maybe I just, like some of my friends, am tired of fighting over something that will seemingly not change anyone’s mind anyway.

And yet I see things on social media that frustrate me to no end. I want to correct falsehoods, and I want to help promote the truth. I think that’s where a good deal of the stress comes from. I see a fight that needs to be had. I see errors that need to be corrected. I see nuance that needs to be added to many conversations. And I just don’t feel like I am up for the fight.

With this certainty of my own exhaustion and the reality that we present the image of ourselves that we want others to see and censor ourselves based on the sensibilities of others, I think the best conclusion I can come up with is that our exhaustion is driven by our rebellion against our individual natures. You can only pretend for so long before it wears you out. Think about just about any teenage drama where someone pretends to be really cool. By the end of the movie the lie has been entirely exposed, and there is a heartwarming moment where everyone is entirely accepting of the nerd that person turned out to be. Real life is not like a teenage drama, but the fact that you can only pretend so long is a popular narrative because we can identify with it.

Putting on an act is tiring, so there are a few potential ways to break the cycle. Most obviously we can try to be more authentic. We don’t have to care so much about our own portrayal of ourselves. Perhaps I would feel better if I felt like I wasn’t trying to curate a perfect image of myself all the time. Rather than pretend like everything is perfect, maybe I need to just be more straightforward about my own life. Yes, it is scary, but that is one filter I have the option of eliminating.

I can try to care less about what other people think as well. There are powerful psychological factors that make me worry about what other people think. I can try to overcome them, and I might be able to in some capacity. I have always been a little bit different than most people anyway, so I have had more experience than many people in this area. Typically, my differences have not led people not to like me, but this is another option to remove the other filter in this process that is exhausting. I don’t have to share what other people think, and if I genuinely don’t care, then there would be no reason for this to be exhausting.

Removing both of these filters would seem to be the pathway to the authenticity that could reconcile my rebellion against my nature. At least in addressing both of these issues I would feel like my social media profile was not warring against who I am. I would at least have the satisfaction in knowing that people are seeing the so-called “true me.” While that would be exhausting in the short term and would most likely get me into a lot of the fights I have been trying to avoid, it would be kind of a trial by fire if you will. The friendships that survive the fire are ones that I know will hold up and accept the entire me. There might be a good deal of collateral damage, but maybe that’s how we ought to proceed to deal with this tension.

Or there might be a more radical option.

Maybe the change can come from the way that we treat other people. Most people who have a good idea seem to believe that if only more people heard their good idea, everyone would come to recognize its value. Why don’t we actually believe that in practice? Why is our instinct to eliminate people that we don’t agree with rather than to present a compelling case as to why our perspective is better? Are we uncertain that our ideas are actually as good as we think they are?

I think the truth is that convincing people is hard and often times unrewarding work.

Some people will not be convinced. Some people will willingly continue in falsehood. That has happened since the beginning of time, and it will happen for the remainder of time. It is reality, and we need to accept that. Even if you are able to eliminate everyone who doesn’t agree with you or at least remove their platforms, you are not really changing minds. You are just pushing those ideas underground. Like I said, some people will not be convinced. That is reality.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t try. I don’t know anyone who has ever been convinced to change because they were insulted out of it or socially isolated. I don’t want to make light of seriously terrible beliefs that some people have, but I know that insults and social isolation drive people into insulated echo chambers. If our ultimate goal is to bring people closer to the truth, then causing that kind of hiding is counterproductive.

Consider the above self-censorship. Perhaps I don’t post something because I am afraid that if I advocate for a certain perspective, people are just going to hate me. Consider a culture of convincing. Someone sees my post and disagrees with it. They make a case for why their position is better. Maybe I buy it, maybe I don’t. Maybe this disagreement goes several rounds. That’s okay. Tough issues require conversations. They tend to be complex.

I know the immediate objection, and I have made this objection before as well. Social media is not conducive to these types of discussions. That is true. I still believe that. However, at the same time, if you have people who are committed to dialogue, social media does not have to be an absolute train wreck. Even if the format is not conducive to these conversations, if people embrace a shared goal of at least trying to have conversations and trying to convince, the results are going to be better.

Let me give you an example of this. I have been posting fewer controversial things publicly, but for those of you who interact with me on Messenger, I am much more open with my opinion if you are the type of person who I can have a conversation with. If you want to have that conversation, I am a very willing partner. It is still social media. We’re still not talking face-to-face. The conversations would be better face-to-face, but at least we are still having them. It is possible, and it is difficult. It is frustrating when people are not convinced by the argument that you find so convincing. I get it, but these conversations are not the ones that exhaust me. They are of a different kind and a better kind.

The landscape of social media is not going to change overnight. In fact, it may never develop into the type of place where we can have these kinds of conversations. However, in order for these types of conversations to take place, I think the only way we are going to be able to solve our exhaustion via false image creation problem is by becoming the kind of people who are capable of having a conversation. When we are able to come together in community, present evidence, reason together, and accept that no one is ever going to entirely agree, social media will be the kind of place where we actually might see some benefit. Until we, as a culture, commit to becoming those kinds of people, we will find ourselves trapped behind the filters of self-image and self-censorship and experience the exhaustion that come along with that.