Are we becoming insensitive on Social Media?

I am a newbie to blogging and have just started exploring the different platforms for publishing my content. I recently started creating content on Instagram and Facebook to learn and hone my Social Media marketing skills.

When I started my journey to blogging and creating content I was very excited that I will learn how to create reels, how to use hashtags, and what types of content to post and others learn the features of these platforms. I was super excited that at least I will get a lot of support from my connections and friends, they might give me suggestions and would forward the posts to their connections to help me grow.

I have around 700 connections on LinkedIn, 350 friends on Facebook, and 119 followers on Instagram. The numbers are not very profound, but decent enough to make an impact on the audience insights data on each of the above-mentioned platforms.

After consistently creating and posting content on these platforms for the past month, I have observed that neither my posts get much engagement nor any comments. Although the stats show the no of impressions to be above 500 approximately.

I am not complaining that every viewer should like/comment/react to my post and that my content is of very superior quality, but the ratio of views to engagement is less than 1 percent. I have even requested my friends and connections to react to my post and support me.

So, I had this feeling in my mind that I wanted to share with the viewers of the post. Have we become insensitive to others' emotions on social media?

When was the last time we appreciated someone’s efforts from our known circle? And if we did, how many times did we genuinely care to understand what the other person had to say through their post?

I know the easiest answer or excuse we have is that we are too busy to take out time to show our appreciation fully but we do care and are happy for them. Do we expect the same result when we post something on Social Media? We keep scrolling through 100s of posts in a day without even noticing the time we spent on these platforms (one can even check the time they spent on these apps from the settings) but we take everything for granted when it comes to posts that are from someone known or maybe we are being jealous and ignoring the efforts of the other person.

I guess we should remove those people from our connections if we don’t like to engage with them, at least we will only have the genuine ones on the list who truly matters to us and give some time to appreciate their efforts.

Since social media has become an integral part of everyone’s life so maybe it’s time that we start changing our online behavior and adapt to react to our friend’s social life just like their real-life – laugh it out if you find something stupid, clap if you are happy for their success, show concern if you feel bad for them.

The emoticons or our comments can sometimes make someone feel the warmth that someone in some corner of the world still feels for them. We never know what a person is going through in his/her life, a small gesture from our end in way of comments/reactions can bring a smile to their face.

Let's pledge to ourselves this year to find out time for our social media friends and connections and catch up with them frequently.

Peace.