Clinical psychologist Dr. Nakieta Lankster explains that people tend to overshare online because they want to feel connected.
“Sometimes we just don't find that in our daily lives. With work, school, and just surviving, we can feel distant from those in our real lives and the internet gives us a convenient place to get that. Community is a basic human need and we will innately find ways to fellowship with one another, but the faux closeness we experience online can make boundaries blurry,” she says to Bored Panda.
Sharing our lives online is still a relatively new experience for humans, which we are still trying to navigate, she adds. “Having a peek "behind the veil" of others' personal lives gives us a faux sense of closeness or companionship. As humans are herd animals and social reciprocity is a way of ensuring our place in the herd, we may often feel "safe" or compelled to share our personal experiences as well.”
Lankster notes that there are also those who seek companionship online because they lack or feel isolated from their community in real life and are trying to find ways to supplement it. “Reasons for IRL isolation are both a cause and symptom (cyclic) of our current western societal functions,” she says.
The main problem Lankster sees with oversharing or trauma-dumping (unloading traumatic experiences without invitation) on the Internet is that people don’t know who they’re talking to. On top of that, what’s meant for one community can easily spread to others without the person’s consent or desire.
“In our personal lives we know to share only specific information with specific people (you don't tell your supervisor about the boil on your butt), but we can't really control that online. Just as much as there are people who will support us online, there are those to cause us harm and exploit our vulnerabilities. When we overshare or trauma dump, this can serve to further hurt us at our lowest moments,” she says.
Lankster further explains that we are very much tempted to share our traumas and bad past experiences online because that’s how we heal from them—by sharing it with others who help us to mend our wounds. But since the internet community isn’t a close group of people one intimately knows (even though it might look like it), they can take advantage of people’s vulnerabilities, which can make the situation worse.
That’s why it might be a good idea to resist sharing everything about our lives online. The first step towards it is to learn to identify when you might be oversharing. Before posting something online, Lankster urges us to ask ourselves questions like:
- "Would I share this with the cashier at the gas station or a random person I bump into at the gym?"
- "Is this critical information for people to know?"
- "Am I in a space to deal with responses (the comment section, stitches, etc.)?"
“The basic thing to keep in mind is that no one is asking you specifically to share this and that you are talking to a stranger. I know we can stitch, reply, and comment, but no one is directly asking for this information from you,” Lankster points out.
