There’s pressure to be engaged with Social Media because you’re in the minority if you don’t and therefore uncool or out of the loop. Since I have been off Facebook (5 months), the only time I have heard it spoken about is at Uni when in a discussion about Social Media. The conversations and interactions online, I’d like to suggest, do not match people’s intentions in real life. I engage and talk with people, like their posts and comments and wouldn’t cross the street to say hello to them in real life. Why would I do that? Because online, my engagement with others is public so everything I do is for a larger audience to see. That larger audience is my ‘community’? Not even. They are people I know, acquaintances, some ‘close’ friends but the majority of them are people I have met once or twice and have never seen again. They know a friend of my friend or are a friends boyfriend but how we all remember each other is through Facebook. So every time I engage publicly, it often has nothing to do with the direct interaction between myself and the person receiving my like or comment. I post on a public page so that everyone can see what I have written. Popularity? To make myself seem more interesting? To publicise an inside joke to make me look closer to a person than I actually am?

Facebook and other social media make us engage with each other in front of a social audience. I don’t think we interact for an individuals’ sake, we interact to prove something to a bigger audience that are our Facebook friends or Instagram followers.