The Impact of Oversharing on Social Media

Exploring the internet has now become a daily necessity. Many interesting things can be done while surfing online. One of them is creating various kinds of content that is then shared on social media so that others can see it. According to Wiltfrong (2013), Indonesia ranks second among countries with the most sharing behaviour (sharing) on social media

Some social media users often create content that is as attractive as possible in order to get many viewers. One way is by sharing personal life. There is nothing wrong when someone shares their personal life on social media. But if it is excessive, it will bring several bad effects that may lurk.

Excessive behaviour in sharing personal life on social media is nowadays often called oversharing. Oversharing is also understood as giving too much information that should not have been shared. For example, the location of one's home, bank account balance, and family problems.

Various negative impacts can threaten a person who does oversharing. For example, it becomes an opening for someone with bad intentions. Because information is so easy to find on social media, crime can lurk one step ahead.

Identity theft is also becoming easier to carry out. A stolen identity can endanger oneself. For example, it may be used as an identity for fraud and so on.

Mental health is also affected because not everyone likes the content that is shared. Various insults and unconstructive criticism can disturb peace of heart and mind. As a result, excessive negative thoughts about oneself emerge, which certainly has a major impact on a person's mental stability.

Perhaps some people will respond neutrally to the phenomenon of oversharing. But there are some who feel disturbed. They then respond badly, causing discomfort in using social media.

A lack of self-confidence in the real world is also one of the things that can be felt after oversharing on social media. This is because information spreads so easily that  the people closest to us find out about the problems posted on social media. Certainly this causes a lack of confidence when meeting people who know about the problems we are facing.

In addition, many companies in Indonesia monitor the social media activity of their job candidates. Certainly oversharing is not a good thing. It can lower the company's assessment of the candidate's quality.

Besides posting about themselves, sometimes people post about others excessively. For example, parents who overshare too much about their children. This does not mean parents may not post about their children on social media, but parents must know the limits of privacy so that their children avoid the bad effects of the oversharing that is done.

The applications that are widely used today actually have privacy protections that can be used. On Instagram there is a close friends feature. On WhatsApp there are privacy features that can be set according to the user's wishes. These can be used if you want to share about yourself and your activities only with people you trust.

In addition, as social media users we must know what is safe for us to post and what we should not post. Use social media in moderation without violating the privacy of ourselves and others. This will restrain us from engaging in oversharing behaviour on social media.

In fact, the negative impacts of oversharing are still poorly understood by some people. Yet the threats are no joke. Therefore it is very important for everyone to know their own privacy limits. Then we should respect ourselves and those closest to us by keeping private the things that do not need to be known by many people.