Can Social Media be Solitary?

 Solitude and social media might seem contradictory, but a lecture I read recently on a different contradictory relationship - solitude and leadership - made me think otherwise. It's a great read and totally worth it if you have the time - originally delivered by literary critic William Deresiewicz’ to the plebe class at West Point in October 2009 and published in The American Scholar.

 Deresiewicz argues that to be a great leader you have to think for yourself. You have to have the personal courage and patience to think through a situation, make associations, change your mind and finally trust that although the final outcome might not be the most popular, it’s the best.  And to think for yourself, you have to spend some time “finding yourself” – or if that sounds too wishy washy, getting to know yourself.  But this isn’t easy, and there are many distractions. According to Deresiewicz, this is one of the biggest downsides to the ever-connected, multitasking world of Twitter and Facebook.  

“When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now—older people as well as younger people—you are continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom. In other people’s reality: for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear our own voice, whether it’s yourself you’re thinking about or anything else.”

I’d argue that the activity of writing a blog post – or even a well thought out post on Facebook or Google+ – is pretty solitary.  The content only becomes social when it’s published. We also have a wide and expanding range of tools at our disposal that actually help us be more solitary in the digital world by taking content off the social media grid or giving us a space to produce content privately but still online. I’m thinking of products like the notetaking organizer Evernote or the scrapbook-like Clipboard for articles.  

It’s an interesting question - does social media always have to be interactive?  Does it have to be about multitasking? Can social media be solitary?  By definition the world “social” implies the involvement of other people, but we have the power to turn this social element on and off.  We can (and should) invest the solitary time to construct our own ideas and then, once we’re satisfied with the result, we can open the floodgates to the online world. Those who don’t do this end up throwing premature ideas out to the world, and it’s usually painfully obvious.

Toward the end of his lecture, Deresiewicz makes the point that one of the ingredients of the solitude and introspection is, paradoxically, conversation with friends. He points to an Emerson quote:

“’the soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude.’ Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person.”

So this is where the social aspect of social media comes in. There’s something really valuable to be gained from the open discussion of the social world, we just have to manage it.