oversharing

I've been thinking a lot about social media in the past few weeks. This summer, I've seen several friends get married, lived in the same city as my fiance for the first time in two years (hello, #mcm!), moved (still in the process), gotten married, and am about to change my name/start a new job/move to a new state/basically go through all of the life changes at once. In all of these occasions I've hesitated to post things online for fear of painting an overly cheery picture of my life. I know the hurt that comes with seeing everyone and their cousin getting engaged before you - the gloominess and boredom of scrolling through Instagram and wishing you were traveling and having adventures like all of your friends. I don't want to share only the good things in my life. But I don't particularly want to share all of the bad things, either - those are things that I would rather not memorialize. So then, who am I posting for? For myself - to remember good times, or maybe just to get a lot of likes? For my family and friends - so they know what I'm doing and can celebrate with me? Or for everyone else - really, just to get a lot of likes and affirmation out of them so I can feel justified in my life choices?

I would like to say that I am posting for myself, to share my excitement with others, to make sure that I and my friends can remember fun things.

But even that is wrong, and even that low-ish bar is too high for me to meet.

My motivation is always me-focused, which might sound like a good thing - at least I'm not letting others dictate my life, right? But I often fail to recognize the effect of my actions online, primarily because I am so removed from them. I can't know how many of my followers are feeling lonely and get set off by #mcm (or baby spam or travel or fancy meal) posts...or how many people post carefully crafted images to hide their fears and loneliness by appearing carefree (of which I am guilty). Every action we take has an effect on other people's moods, especially when it comes to the emotions we put into our social media image/comparison game.

So the obvious solution staring at me is to switch from me-focused to God-focused, a task easier said than done. How do I honor God in my twitter feed? I have a few guidelines from scripture on what to dwell on: is it true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, or praiseworthy? (Phil. 4:8) If it's not those things...probably not worth sharing. That's not to say I should always be overly positive and need to quote a verse in every caption. But I've found many examples of people who can share their struggles and still praise God, and still find the lovely and excellent aspects of their situations worth sharing.

I suppose all of that was to say that I've been afraid of oversharing some things, of being too excited and too hashtag-happy (especially around my wedding which was the most exciting and best experience of my life to date) - but there is no prize for hiding from social media(/culture). Hiding the truth in my life is lighting my lamp then hiding it under a bowl for no one to benefit from. If my motivation is focused on God's commands - if it's focused on loving others, being authentic, teaching about Jesus and his transformative word - if it's not focused on likes or even my feelings - if this is the case, if I'm contributing to my subculture and sphere of influence in ways that speak truth and purity and excellence, then it would be impossible to argue that it would be better not to post anything at all - and difficult to argue that there's even such a thing as oversharing of these sorts of posts.