Are we using LinkedIn wrong?

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Are we using linkedin wrong

Social Media. Instagram, Facebook, Tinder, Linkedin, Medium, Twitter, the list goes on. Theses socials want to connect consumers more efficiently by bringing us together onto their respective platforms, a shared space to document every millisecond of our lives or to be a passive consumer if you feel otherwise. But are they altering how we trust others?

I was scrolling through LinkedIn the other day, mindlessly flicking through the new and slightly restructured newsfeed. Every so often finding an interesting post or comment and irrespective of having any connections with the author I would find myself spamming the connect button. For reasons I don’t yet understand, Linkedin has become a place to add everyone within sight. A way of expanding the spider web of connections that we find ourselves thinking we need in the work environment.

God forbid if we were to have no digital footprint! Recruiters would overlook us and the connection requests we do send out would be met with a puzzled look, “huh, who in the world is this?” It would seem we have moulded the belief that a curated, active, ‘healthy’ profile is a more equitable relationship compared to one perceived to be inactive, lying dormant.

What's weird is that we are more likely to trust someone with an active profile, without even meeting them.

The digital breadcrumb trail that LinkedIn has unknowingly created for each connection hoarding user, means that for every person we are connected to has a trail of our activity on their respective feeds. A post, like or comment is simply needed to stay at the forefront of users’ subconscious in the digital landscape.

To an extent, this is useful, building stereotypes is an efficient way of dealing with life, but that being said it’s not a condonable action. We’re able to sieve the irrelevant connections that we want to make and try to connect with individuals we feel we can have mutually beneficial relationships with. But in reality, we quickly forget this and revert to connection hoarding, trying to get closer to that proposed tale of being 6 connections away from absolutely anyone online.

To say I have a solution for the proposed matter would be lofty, the use of social media, the digital world, it is what you make of it. Some abuse it for their own personal gain, others try to find the quality in the heaps of useless content we use as an escape.

The bottom line is, awareness is needed when using Linkedin. Trust is important, and this idea of it being a thing we should have to earn is a barrier to future relationships. Trying to make sure that the level of trust we express online via a connection invite is the same as we are doing in our daily lives.

Let’s not be a hypocritic.