'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

If your career hinges on social media

[redmid17]

I highly highly doubt it's a career. Or you could just be really, really shitty at your job. I made it about 2 paragraphs but had to stop when he was talking about some guy who felt the need to update his blog every 30 minutes. That's just an abnormal amount of anxiety and narcissism, not to mention an insane outlook on social media and modern life.

Re:Not at all true

[MightyMartian]

But folks around here absolutely insist that no company should ever make employment decisions based on your personally stated views. If you want to be a Neo-nazi in your off hours, why, the company should have no right to say "We don't want a Neo-Nazi working for us..." Or, if you're the prospective CEO of a company with a diverse workforce including LGBT individuals, the Board should have no right to disqualify you if you go around declaring "Gays are evil..."

Re:TLDR

[Mashiki]

Spot on. Now I've got a question...does this mean the people who don't have social media accounts are no longer "dangerous loners, with strong anti-social tendencies" and this will no longer count against them? I seem to remember several stories here in /. pushing the whole "if you don't have a social media account, good luck getting hired." And several more pushing the you're a danger to the public good.

Re:Not at all true

[lgw]

Are you old enough to remember when the religious right was the self-appointed gatekeepers of American morality, and had the power to restrict speech they disagreed with?

Your words and attitude remind me strongly of them. Free speech is important, but Howard Stern needs to lose his job, that sort of degeneracy will destroy America, and then no one will have free speech.

Oh, your catalog of sins is different, of course, as if that mattered. 30 years ago it was "too racy, too sexy". These days it's "too racist, too sexist". Censorious moral busybodies, the lot of you.