Social Media as a Creative—The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Welcome back everyone! We've finished our four part intro piece on the Exposure Triangle and its components (which can be found here), let's get into some generic blogging! Social media, what are your opinions? Is it worth it? Are you a creative? What even is a creative???

We'll be looking at some journal articles relating to social media and mental health, some online opinion pieces and some personal opinions from myself through this blog

Social media, a concept that has well and truly infiltrated and integrated into our lives, it's the modern day newspaper, which is always on refresh providing us with a solid stream of content. But in the grand timeline, it's only been here for a fraction of a second technically, and for people from my age group (mid 20's) it's been around since we can remember. A webpage by the name of "Small business trends" suggests that the first website to truly be considered social media was called "Six Degrees" in 1997, a platform where people could create a profile and "connect" with others (you can see this webpage here). So 1997? So much has changed, from my memory it was MSN, Myspace, Facebook, Google Hangouts (lol), Reddit, Instagram, Snapchat, Tik-Tok, and this is a nowhere near comprehensive list. The change, growth and potential of social media has absolutely boomed. As of 2017 it's reported that 2.48 billion people use social media services; thats a lot of users, a lot of personalities. What does this mean for us as creatives? Let's look at the good, the bad, the ugly.

Social Media for a creative

What even is a "creative" though? Personally I believe a creative is anyone who is passionate about some form of artistic expression. I think I would consider myself a creative personality, I've painted on and off for over a decade and a half, photography has been the pursuit of the last year. Prior to photography, my social media use was very different, I was your average consumer, used Facebook for memes, Instagram every now and then, and a bit of Snapchat. Since my pursuit of photography I've noticed my behaviours online change. If you consider yourself a creative, or even if you don't, how do you use social media? What is the impact is has on your daily life, whether positive or negative? Take a bit of time to reflect on your use of social media; is it contributing to, or is it detracting from the experience of your life. A bit of brutal honesty to yourself here can help in the long run.

I think we'll start with some of the downsides of Social Media then move on to what I believe are some benefits.

The Dark Alleys of Social Media

Even for all the connectivity with others, even friends and family from the other side of the globe, science has shown us that social media does have its downsides, and they're pretty significant.

A blog post by Alice Walton on Forbes.com highlights a study that associates a correlation with poor mental health and increased social media use, highlighting depression and anxiety and found that reducing exposure to social media sites improved perceptions of mental health within individuals interviewed. Another article highlighted in the Forbes blog focuses on the impact of social media on females and "comparison games," whereby females were asked to interact with someone they found "more attractive" than themselves, this was linked to decreases in perceptions of mental health and coined with the term—"Social Comparison Factor." As creatives, I feel this is the most relevant to us or at least myself personally. I'm incredibly critical of my own work, I often over compensate in the amount of effort I put into learning and developing skills to not be behind the pack, as a result of this mentality, I pick up new skills quite quickly, but I drop pursuits just as easily as I pick them up. Why? I'm comparing myself to that of peers in my immediate circle, or of circles I've never even met before, people that may have well been doing this for a lot longer than myself, or had a different method of learning. This "Social comparison factor" is one of my biggest handicaps in using social media, I compare myself to others regardless of how much effort they've put in, or what they've done differently, and I put myself down as a result, then I'm less likely to follow the pursuit related to this interaction.

So not only does our use of social media affect our mental health, but from personal experience it's also affected my creativity, and it's something that I've had to be really mindful of and purposely try to avoid. I chase the likes.

What is chasing the likes? Chasing the likes is when you'll tailor your content to what is most popular and most likely to result in engagement, whether that be likes, comments, shares, or features as opposed to what you want to share. Early on, I found myself posting or trying to post things I thought would achieve the most likes, this might've been specific types or portraiture, or specific types of urban photography, but it was incredibly limiting in what I was able to share on social media. I don't have a specific style, or a specific "feed" on my Instagram, I don't want to be locked into one style of shooting or editing, I like all types of photography. I want to post what I want to post, because I want to share it, but I haven't always been like that. While it is good to receive "praise" from your peers or strangers, it's not the only reason we as creatives create. We create because we have a desire to make something, or change something, not for validation. But with social media, and instant gratification, it is so easy to fall into "chasing the likes." Focus on yourself, be open to truly constructive criticism, but don't assume a lack of likes is for a lack of worth. Focus less on the engagement, and more on the process and beauty of creation. We create, because we create, not for validation.

And as if being your own worst enemy wasn't enough (lol, what's stable mental health?), remember how I mentioned there's a lot of personalities in the 2.48 billion users? We're not always going to agree, and not everyone is as polite as they could be. Send in the trolls. Trolling as a defined term has been around for a while and has many different and often diverse definitions depending on who you ask. But most commonly it is the concept of grieving (giving someone a hard time/bullying) someone in relation to a specific or wide topic. A definition found by a quick google search states: "Trolling is defined as creating discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people by posting inflammatory or off-topic messages in an online community." Trolls are people with too much time, and are best avoided, and if they can't be avoided, ignore them. Engaging in anyway shape or form just gives them more opportunity to continue to harass you.

However, I do hope this reflection hasn't turned you off of social media though, as it does have its benefits. When we are able to control our perception of it, rather than it control our perception of self.

The Rainbow of Social Media

With all the doom and gloom that we've just been over, does it actually have a benefit? You're damn right it does, like every storm, focus on the opportunity to dance in the rain rather than the fact that it's raining. It's a matter of mentality and perspective in some instances, but in other instances, there are cold, hard, tangible benefits to an online presence.

I would like to separate some things that I think are a matter of mentality from things that are tangible benefits before going into more depth:

Matter of mentality:

• Potential for increased creativity
• Potential for increased skill

Tangible Benefits:

• Connectivity with creatives
• Ability to troubleshoot
• Ability to find work
• Ability to share what we've done

Benefits on a matter of mentality

Considering we just discussed the impact of the "social comparison factor" in this article above and how debilitating it is for myself personally, these are personally what I believe to be the greatest benefits to my creative pursuits. But it is entirely dependent on my mentality on engagement. With so many users of social media, there are always going to be others out there better than myself, whether that be from a technical perspective, a creative perspective, or even a public engagement perspective. Someone, will always do it better. I can learn from that. I can set myself the challenge, to improve or change what I'm doing; the beautiful thing about seeing something done in a specific style or creative direction is that I damn well know I can achieve that, because someone else already has. There is nothing wrong with taking inspiration from others, this is the beautiful thing about social media; if we're using it correctly we can channel the creativity and the perspective of millions of other creatives from around the globe, we can harness that, we can change it, and we can create again. But this requires a purely open mindset, to acknowledge that other people are doing things differently or better, and to better ourselves.

But at the same time, not only are we able to open our mind to different elements of creativity, we're able to learn, and up-skill through social media. With the internet, blogs, articles, videos, online courses, nothing is beyond our potential to learn a concept. We are able to infinitely up-skill, should we recognise we can. Many of the artists I follow on instagram offer small scale bit sized educational content pieces in their posts, these small snippets are still positive in contributing to my growth as a creative.

Tangible Benefits

Even though some of the benefits of social media are flexible depending on your mentality, there are some benefits that don't really need a matter of mindset to see them as positives.

Social media gives us the ability to communicate, interact or share things with people creatives or otherwise, that we previously most likely wouldn't have otherwise. We have the ability to maintain friendships or close relationships with creatives we may meet in passing, as I have with two of my now close friends who are photographers also. And the ability to interact or communicate with someone on the other side of the world, near instantly, even though we've become accustomed to this, is mind blowing. I'm travelling soon, prior to even boarding my flight I've managed to join some photography groups in the area that I'll be travelling to in advance. This wouldn't be possible without social media as I don't have preexisting contacts where I'm travelling.

Additionally, in this contact, we can now troubleshoot things with a wider "hive-mind," drawing on the experiences of others to help us; whether this be troubleshooting technical difficulties, trouble shooting emotions, or creative slumps, we're able to do this with infinitely more experience than we previously could, because we can borrow that experience from others.

There's also the opportunity for us to find paid work should we want it through social media; whether that be organically or through advertisements, we're able to put ourselves in front of a much wider audience more easily than ever. While I am passionate about photography enough to do it for free in my own time, man's gotta eat yeah. Improving our ability to find work through our creative passion should we want to is a huge benefit of social media.

And lastly, I believe this is the best part about social media, we get to share our work. I create because I enjoy creating, but I also like having the ability to share that with others. It's not the only reason why I create, I do think it is a strong internal urge for me to create simply to create, but being able to share my work, and to show others, to inspire others, to help others, whatever the impact of that piece of work, for others to get something from it. That's the best part about social media for me personally.

So what do you think?

What do you think? Is social media for you? Is it something you want to put more time and effort into? Or is it something you want to reduce your exposure to? I've fluctuated in the past between too much and very little, I do think now though, as long as I'm mindful in its consumption, and it's serving a purpose, it has a place in my life, for now.

Once again, thanks for stopping by! - J

As always, if you've enjoyed this blog, or if you've found some benefit from this, feel free to share it around, drop a comment on the facebook post with this blog on my page, or if you're really feeling generous Vocal allows readers to leave tips. If you enjoyed this enough to buy me a coffee I wouldn't say no to a coffee donation 😍

If I've missed something or completely missed the mark, please feel free to let me know also, I do take constructive criticism onboard for future blogs!