What Does Your Social Media Feed Teach You About Yourself?
By: Fanni Gabor
Tags: Attention Economy, Feedback, Social Media Awareness, Coaching, Emotional Wellbeing

What Does Your Social Media Feed Teach You About Yourself?

I am building a coaching business to help people stay present in order to find, prioritize, and align their lives with their values. Some are shocked I’m not against social media.

My coaching is not rooted in forcefully closing ourselves off from the world’s realities and distractions at all cost. We make changes and adjust forward to the best versions of our lives while learning to control outside stimuli, not running away from it.

When people ask if they should quit social media, I respond with questions: What purpose is social media serving in your life? Where do you find value?

To me, social media has always been a gold mine. It helps me stay in touch, share information and consume information shared by friends and businesses. On the flop side, it‘s addictive and at times, destructive. How can I balance these two sides? I try to view it within the grey areas, the in-betweens, the balance. What does the in-between space of quitting Facebook or Instagram vs. becoming a miserable addict look like? How can I look at it as a tool that serves me and use it to my advantage?

Like any goods or services I interact with, I first make sure I understand its business model. Social media serves two content offerings: advertisements (how the company makes money) and user-generated posts (how the company acquires and keeps users to sell more advertisements). I am not Facebook’s customer since I don’t pay for it. I am a user of the platform that is built for advertisers’ interests. I like to keep in mind that most of these are not large corporations but small businesses that could not afford to reach audiences through traditional media channels.

Targeted Advertisement: the reflection of our past and present lives

I worked at advertising agencies for a decade. I know how much people get paid to produce ads, I understand how buying media, targeting customers, and creating ads work. As a user of the platform, I am aware that personal information I’ve shared with Facebook, search engines, purchase data (aka “digital journey”), and other valuable information for marketers is shared with companies to reach me as their potential customer. I personally prefer supporting local businesses and being given targeted ads based on my expressed interests, rather than watching a random assortment of corporate commercials on TV or in magazines that are wholly irrelevant to me.

I care about where my attention goes, so I find it interesting that my attention acts as a company’s business model. I’ve been focusing on aligning my personal and professional passions: my current internet searches are around coaching, therapy, meditation, yoga, mindful communications, and relationships.

Most of the ads I’m receiving feature coaches, meditation schools, small businesses, and teachers I’d hope to find anyway. I click on my Facebook ads frequently because I find them interesting and want to learn more. They lead me to an array of people and websites I’m sometimes inspired by, other times horrified by, but nonetheless always fuel my curiosity.

I don’t blame the content of the ads. The content is following my past behavior and patterns. The ads are pieces of information, leading me to new places. If I don’t like the content, I need to change the course: data informs ads and tells us what is, not what could or should be. I have seen my fair share of wedding dress, real estate, mortgage, infertility treatment, divorce lawyer, and online dating ads. They did not create my future. They responded to a present need and interest brought on by my past.

I write my future. Where my attention goes, my energy and online ads will follow.

UP NEXT: Part 2: Using user content as a source of information and feedback

Fanni is a mindfulness coach based in Brooklyn, New York. She blends her corporate recruitment, yoga & meditation and generative coaching experience to help her clients live the best version of their lives. Sign up for her Create & Connect Workshop series here!