Social media, privacy and morality – will the Internet make us better or worse?
A lot has been written and said about some of the negative impacts of social media that range from privacy concerns to harming children’s brains. These concerns may be valid (I have mine too), but the voluntary loss of privacy that comes with being active on Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare may have some unintended benefits. As blasphemous as this may sound, if you’re really looking for a silver lining here, there is one to be found.
Firstly, no one can deny that the primary driver behind social media participation is still largely our own selfish need to be heard and connected. Aren’t we all just self-promoting narcissists trying to build our corporate or personal brands and the only ‘social’ aspect we care about is the attention we’re getting from others? This is probably true, but the success of social media itself seems to contradict this assumption and is evidence that we all are not only satisfying our selfish needs, but are also providing some value to each others lives. If our primary motivations are purely selfish in nature, how is this even possible? 
I think it has a lot to do with morality and moral intuitions. As psychologist Jonathan Haidt put it so well, “just as our tongues guide us to good foods and away from bad foods, our minds guide us to good people, away from bad people”*. In other words, it may be possible that the reason we thrive (in spite of ourselves) in these new social environments is because we tend to adopt moralistic behaviors that curtail our selfish motivations. I’m no psychologist, but with the exception of a few celebrities, long term social media popularity and success is not only dependent on being interesting and engaging, but also on following some basic moral principles such as not harming others and treating people with respect. In some ways, the more moral you are in your social media behavior, the more likely that you will be heard, appreciated and recognized in today’s crowded social media landscape. Let’s take Twitter as an example — it’s a service that seems to have an unwritten moral code ingrained in concepts like Retweets and the Follow Friday hashtag. It’s these simple manifestations of reciprocal altruism in social media that has in a small way, helped services like Twitter grow at such exponential rates.
Coming back to the issue of privacy, as we make the conscious choice to share more, we as a society are likely to grow more comfortable with blurring the boundaries between our public and private lives. Consequently, we will cope by growing more conscious about how the thoughts we share and actions we perform, whether offline or online may be stored and broadcasted for consumption by others. Managing our own personal brand and reputation will become critical. This combined with the fact that we will form new emotional attachments and connections online, may end up bringing about out a lot of good in us. When you know you’re being watched by people that trust you, aren’t you more likely to be more honest, transparent and respectful? Further, the broadening of our social spheres will be a great incentive for us to collaborate, cooperate and display altruistic behavior with more people than ever before. How can that be a bad thing?
I’m not implying that privacy becomes a non-issue because we will all behave nicely to save face. There’s still a lot of work to be done around establishing the right balance that meets individual notions of privacy. However, I’m just hoping our moral compass continues to play an important role in guiding us through this challenging journey.
