Instagram is Not The Most Dangerous Social Media. It’s LinkedIn.

Disclaimer: This article represents the writer’s experience.

Imagine this scenario

You woke up on a lazy Sunday at 10 am with a light dizziness from the crazy night before. It’s not that late, but your gleaming sunlit room says that you’ve missed breakfast and you won’t get any worms for the day. Nonetheless, it’s fine, since it’s your day off anyway. You then take a quick catch up and proceed to stress over this chaotic world by reading the “modern” newspaper, Twitter and Instagram. But, something strange and corrupt-like happened to your Instagram notifications. The amount of unknown accounts tagging, following, and liking your pictures were remarkable. Dozens and hundreds, it weirdly and unexpectedly became as crowded as a vaccination queue at the city hall.

Since Instagram doesn’t work like TikTok, it’s almost impossible to get viral overnight. Not to mention that you’re Not an Influencer. You were in dismay, as you went on your Sherlock-mode and got to the bottom of it. Well, they said that eyes can’t lie, but they forgot to mention that your mouth, nose, even eyebrows were also telling the truth. Your bewildered expression is looking at your own professionally-taken modelling pictures, posted by a large “Beauty Pageant Enthusiast” account of 227k followers. Apparently, they were “nominating” you to represent Jawa Timur for the following Miss Indonesia 2021. A little flattered, but quickly turns into a quiet rage when you read their caption.

Hold up… all… that detailed unconsented information… to their 227k followers… Mam, that’s a full-on complete biography. YOUR biography. Presented to THOUSANDS of complete strangers. It irks you, because you’re the type of person that sets boundaries between your “work life” and your “personal life” on Instagram, so this feels like a huge violation to your privacy.

And where did they even get all that? Yeah, you’ve guessed it, LinkedIn.

LinkedIn and Participatory Culture

“Participatory culture is a term that is often used for designating the involvement of users, audiences, consumers and fans in the creation of culture and content.”- Fuchs (2018)

LinkedIn, as a social media and a professional networking site, is a terrific platform for people around our age to land their dream career. Their growth rate is proven by its over than 575 million users, ranging from students, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and anyone who wants to expand their network. Consequently, any innovation involving humans and technology would sooner or later meet its slump.

As a digital native, I’m positive we’re all familiar with the term “prosumer” (producer-consumer), because we’re one ourselves. You post on Instagram, update your LinkedIn, create questionable TikTok videos, whilst consuming other people’s contents. This recurring process proves that the role of consumer is as important as the role of the producer (Jenkins, 2006: 20–21). This is what we call participatory culture.

Okay, so LinkedIn relies heavily on participatory culture, but what could go wrong?

Different Platform = Different User’s Characteristics

Instagram got the visuals, TikTok got the twisted videos, and LinkedIn got all your personal information. You go to Instagram to seek for public validation, TikTok for the immeasurable amount of entertainment, and LinkedIn for job-seeking and professional networking. Each platform serves different purposes for its different audiences, or in theory, Uses and Gratification Theory. The basic premise of the theory is that individuals will seek out media among competitors that fulfills their needs and leads to ultimate gratifications (Lariscy et al., 2011). In short, you’re going to gravitate towards a social platform that will most satisfy and fit your current needs. It’s simple, but this is where it could get messy.

Not only does each platform have different audiences, but it also has different kinds of content. It would be rather weird to see That One Quiet Kid from high school to post their renegade dance on Instagram feed. It’s not wrong, just weird. This is because we’re all too accustomed to the unwritten norms and behaviour in social media, that a slightest change in content pattern would create a dissonance in our minds.

IMO, LinkedIn’s unwritten rule is, “What’s written in LinkedIn, stays in LinkedIn.” I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna be pissed if someone impudently took my information from my LinkedIn and posted it without my consent. Especially when we’ve built our “professional persona” in contrast with our “personal persona”. But as you know, our society glorifies data so much that LinkedIn instantly looks like a goldmine. LinkedIn also insists you to add detailed information about yourself in order to make the most out of the platform; school, workplace, interests, skills, past and present colleagues, even emails, telephone number, and address. Even my dad doesn’t know that much about me. This comes with lots of risks, including identity theft, security risks, fraud, phishing, and many others. It’s great and helpful, but just thinking about experiencing our first scenario above makes me feel cheated and stripped naked in the public eye. It’s very likely to happen to anyone, not limited to you and me.

What Can We Do?

Social media has massively changed the way we present ourselves. Giving little to no information to the public would equal having no “significant role” in our society, as if we never existed. Any active user who observes the rapid growth of technology and social media would know that it shows no sign of slowing down. One quote I vividly remember from my dear lecturer in Communication Studies is, “We can’t avoid technology and innovation. It will happen and we can only accept it.” Yeah… that sounds a tad bit post-apocalyptic and depressing. Frankly, I never opened my LinkedIn because it triggers my anxiety. But, I also understand the pressure to fit the society’s mold and I’m gonna have to give in, eventually. Most definitely not going to be the one that uses LinkedIn as their whole personality, though. For now, we can only manage our privacy settings levels of privacy based on our comfort zone. Let’s just hope that we could all unchain ourselves from the crippling anxiety that binds us to this somewhat-evil system. ❤

Referensi

Fuchs, C. (2018). Social media: A critical introduction. SAGE.

Jenkins, nry. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York University Press.

Weaver Lariscy, R., Tinkham, S. F., & Sweetser, K. D. (2011). Kids these days: Examining differences in political uses and gratifications, internet political participation, political information efficacy, and cynicism on the basis of age. American Behavioral Scientist, 55(6), 749–764. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764211398091