'Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It.' (nytimes.com)

The New York Times ran a strong opinion piece that talks about one critical reason why everyone should quit social media: your career is dependent on it. The other argues that by spending time on social media and sharing our thoughts, we are demeaning the value of our work, our ideas. (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source.) Select excerpts from the story follows:In a capitalist economy, the market rewards things that are rare and valuable. Social media use is decidedly not rare or valuable. Any 16-year-old with a smartphone can invent a hashtag or repost a viral article. The idea that if you engage in enough of this low-value activity, it will somehow add up to something of high value in your career is the same dubious alchemy that forms the core of most snake oil and flimflam in business. Professional success is hard, but it's not complicated. The foundation to achievement and fulfillment, almost without exception, requires that you hone a useful craft and then apply it to things that people care about. [...] Interesting opportunities and useful connections are not as scarce as social media proponents claim. In my own professional life, for example, as I improved my standing as an academic and a writer, I began receiving more interesting opportunities than I could handle. As you become more valuable to the marketplace, good things will find you. To be clear, I'm not arguing that new opportunities and connections are unimportant. I'm instead arguing that you don't need social media's help to attract them. My second objection concerns the idea that social media is harmless. Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it's engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it's designed to be used -- persistently throughout your waking hours -- the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom. Once this Pavlovian connection is solidified, it becomes hard to give difficult tasks the unbroken concentration they require, and your brain simply won't tolerate such a long period without a fix. Indeed, part of my own rejection of social media comes from this fear that these services will diminish my ability to concentrate -- the skill on which I make my living. A dedication to cultivating your social media brand is a fundamentally passive approach to professional advancement. It diverts your time and attention away from producing work that matters and toward convincing the world that you matter. The latter activity is seductive, especially for many members of my generation who were raised on this message, but it can be disastrously counterproductive.

Comments

Dumb title

[DogDude]

That title suggests that the article is about the very real idea that what you post on social media can cost you your career. Instead, it's an article saying that posting on social media won't magically lead to a career. I'm confused as to why the author would ever think that posting on social media could lead to anything in the first place. Very strange premise.

Re:Dumb title

[geekmux]

...I'm confused as to why the author would ever think that posting on social media could lead to anything in the first place. Very strange premise.

In a world where YouTube "stars" earn six-figure salaries, and social media "celebrities" are earning far more than that, you're struggling as to how anyone would ever think that posting on social media could lead to anything in the first place??

It may be narcissistic and nonsensical, but recognize what society AND business actually reward these days related to social media. Cold hard cash is the justification, and that's hardly a strange premise.

Johnny Knoxville (of Jackass fame) has a net worth north of $50 million. Howard Stern (Shock Jock/Professional Asshole) has a net worth north of $500 million, and earns an eight-figure salary today. It's no surprise how idiocy in entertainment bled over to social media.

Re:Dumb title

[AthanasiusKircher]

I'm confused as to why the author would ever think that posting on social media could lead to anything in the first place. Very strange premise.

I could be reading it wrong, but I think this is sort of a spin on the old "networking" and contacts to get jobs trope. "It's not what you know, but who you know" and all that.

A social media presence keeps you in contact with lots of people, and I suppose the idea is that it's kind of like what people used to do in the old days -- going out and hanging out at the "right" parties, getting drinks with the "right" people, etc. Then when it comes time to get the job or the promotion or whatever, I guess everyone's supposed to say, "Gee, he posts great cat pictures! Let's give him the job!"

I jest a bit, but not much. I suppose if you're looking for a job that will involve posting on social media, then obviously having a social media presence might be important for getting that job. Otherwise, my experience is that any social media connections are generally much more shallow than even the staged dinners people used to hold (do they still?) for "networking" purposes. I absolutely agree that "knowing the right people" is important for finding a job -- but I have doubts that your social media presence is the way to do that. At best, you maintain some tenuous connection to a "friend" you've barely met, who might chuckle at your cat photo. At worst, you post some political story to your feed without thinking and end up alienating 30% of potential employers you took such care to "friend."

Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I am officially "friends" through social media with many colleagues in my field (though I basically never post anything there), but the people who are actually going to help me if I want to get a different job or whatever are the people I talk to in person, the people I get coffee or lunch or drinks with, the people who actually KNOW me... not some online spectre of me.

Re:Dumb title

[AthanasiusKircher]

In a world where YouTube "stars" earn six-figure salaries, and social media "celebrities" are earning far more than that, you're struggling as to how anyone would ever think that posting on social media could lead to anything in the first place??

It may be narcissistic and nonsensical, but recognize what society AND business actually reward these days related to social media. Cold hard cash is the justification, and that's hardly a strange premise.

Yeah, except compare the number of "YouTube sensations" to the number of posted videos never viewed by more than a few dozen people or whatever.

Becoming a "social media celebrity" is like becoming of pop music star. Yeah, it can happen, but for every person who "makes" it, there are 10,000 wannabes out there, doing karaoke at the local bar.

Is there money to be made in social media? Sure, but unless you find a very particular niche or a truly innovative thing to do with it, your chances of making it big are perhaps just a little better than playing the lottery. Merely posting random junk every hour like everyone else does on social media won't make you stand out... hence, I'm pretty sure the message of TFA was you have much better luck getting a job if you instead devote that time to developing actual skills.

Not at all true

[SuperKendall]

Yes if you are just retweeting a bunch of stuff your Twitter feed will do nothing for you.

But if you have a professional Twitter feed that you contribute valuable material to, that would be looked on pretty favorably by someone hiring at a company. It's not that much different than having a good record of contribution on GitHub, which I know some employers also look at.

Basically just be aware that anything you do on social media these days will be accessible to companies you may want to work for, use that to your advantage - post responsibly my friends.

Roller Coaster

[Anonymous Coward]

People go to amusement parks which doesn't contribute anything to their careers either. Author clearly doesn't understand the text based amusement park we call social media.

Re:Roller Coaster

[Gilgaron]

I'd say most of us are as likely to make six figures riding roller coasters as posting to social media...

Re:If your career hinges on social media

[shaitand]

No, there is some legitimacy here. Not the authors actual argument which seems to depend on the premise that we are all worker droids and the only in an activity is how it will impact your ability to indenture yourself into the service of others or at least financially. But there is a degree of truth to the headline. Employers all search social media (or have background investigation firms do so, often illegally since they always access even restricted and private profiles). Using social media in and of itself has no impact on your career except in instances where you do not and employers distrust you because they CAN'T snoop on you.

Having said the wrong thing on social media can impact your ability to obtain employment or even cause you to lose your job, setting the privacy settings on a post incorrect can reveal to a jealous and two-faced co-worker that your sick day was a personal day or reveal the truth behind the double face we all wear privately vs the official workplace place we present. There is very little chance you will benefit financially or in your career from social media so using only increases the chance of it hurting you in those ways at some point.

Maybe in your profession...

[Kjella]

Interesting opportunities and useful connections are not as scarce as social media proponents claim. In my own professional life, for example, as I improved my standing as an academic and a writer

Academics is all about getting works published. Writing is all about getting works published. In 95% of all careers, only your boss, coworkers and maybe a few direct recipients know what you've done. From him it's probably not wise to put out to much drivel on social media because he'll become another blogger with mouth diarrhea, if you read anything with his name on it should be a high quality work that leaves you impressed. For most everybody else though networking is their little way of telling the world here am I and these are my skills, recognition by other professionals is key to making a career. Not that I really have the patience or desire to engage in much of that outside working hours, but there's no denying that a lot of people who are good at it and spend a lot of time doing it get good opportunities.

Re:TLDR

[ShanghaiBill]

Too long, didn't read.

You didn't miss much. TFA is silly. Ideas and thoughts are not "demeaned" by sharing them. Sharing an idea makes it valuable. You can get feedback, and refine the idea, and the chance of one of your lazy friends "stealing" your idea is wildly exaggerated.

There are plenty of good reasons to minimize social media use, such as wasting time, but even there it is better than passive activities like watching TV. The first warning that you should skip this article is in the first paragraph, when the author brags that "I’ve never had a social media account". So if he has never tried it, how can he be such a big expert about it? Is anyone else sick of listening to non-users acting superior, and preaching on and on about how their choice is the only true path to a perfect life? These people are worse than vegans.

Re:TLDR

[Mashiki]

They're not dying because of social media. They're dying because people don't trust them and are looking for their news from any source but them. What's the trust rating of the MSM these days? 6-10% something like that. People know the media have lied, carried an agenda, pushed partisan politics. This is all a problem of their own making.

As a computer expert I see 3-4 dangers in FB &

[Qbertino]

As a computer expert I avoid social media for anything mission critical, as I suppose many here do.
I also use fake names, just as in the days of old on IRC and Usenet.

Personally, I see 3-4 big dangers in social media:

1) The first is the obvious one: Total surveillance. Brave New World meets 1984 meets Neuromancer meets Snow Crash. And all in bad ways. Not for me. And I tell everyone I meet what FarceBook and WhatsCrap mean for their privacy.

2) Social Media is very short lived and eats up time at the same time.

3) The negative impact social media has on the human psyche is, in my opinion, quite significant. FOMO, self-esteem issues and F4ceb00k depression are real things and they exist with a measurable amount of people who live through mass social media. Social media emulates belonging to a community whilst at the same time causing us to drift further and further apart.

A point in case: My fiancé is an online PR / SMM worker and loves her job although she's being paid pretty crappy.
Just watching her being sucked up into some online thing going on that she has to attend to for private or work reasons at just about any possible occasion makes me look like a super-relaxed shepherd in comparsion. ... It's a bit scary to be honest. I don't want to know what people will be like 30 years from now.

4) Addiction and behavioral imacpt: I see this issue with younger generations who live through social media and I think it's turning a large portion of those using social media into an ADHD-driven OCD candidates.