Have you ever found yourself confiding in a stranger about your issues with your closest friend? or telling your colleagues about the specifics of a passionate evening spent with your significant other?
Do you share your health-related worries on social media then?
The revealing of personal information beyond what is reasonable for the circumstances is known as oversharing. You can share this information in person or on social media. Thus, is excessive sharing harmful? How does excessive sharing affect us and other people?
Excessive and unexpected sharing can occasionally be weird and unsettling. It can feel like a violation of our boundaries when we are made to watch or listen to things we don't want to.
While we can overlook instances of oversharing, like posting too many stories on Instagram, we might not know how to respond when oversharing occurs in in-person interactions. Such circumstances can make us feel apprehensive and uncomfortable.
However, we also don't want to insult the person we are speaking with by saying the wrong thing. If the other person consistently behaves in this way, though, we could find it awkward to speak with them and may want to avoid contact altogether.
We might unfollow them on social media or try to avoid encountering them in the same setting. What occurs, therefore, if we are the ones who overshare?
Most of the time, we are unaware that we are oversharing. Sometimes our realisation that we are oversharing comes from the other person's response, and other times it comes to us later on.
We may feel uneasy and ashamed when we recognise that we have led the conversation in an inappropriate direction due to the other person's response. We could feel bad about what we said or disappointed that the other person did not respond in the way we had anticipated.
However, if we overshare on social media on a regular basis, we can notice a decline in the amount of activity on our posts over time or a loss of contact with the people we follow.
We have the option to take these events personally, which could make us angry and lead to bad ideas about our relationships or ourselves. For instance, we could believe that nobody is drawn to us or inquisitive about us.
You may be wondering, if oversharing is bad for us and the other party, then why do we still do it? Let's examine the causes of this behaviour:
In 2015, a study involving social media users revealed that while revealing personal information, individuals are more concerned with the possible benefits than the risks. These possible benefits include having fun, making new friends, introducing oneself to people, and enhancing current relationships.