We all have friends who dominate social media. They're churning out selfies on Instagram, dropping tweet-storm manifestos, and terrorizing your Facebook feed with their un-funny vertical videos. You've cursed them and thought about slowing their roll with an unfollow. Maybe — gasp! — you're even guilty of a little overzealous posting yourself.
If any of those scenarios are true, Harvard professor Michael Norton has some news: over-sharing isn't all bad. In fact, research shows we're more suspicious of Facebook friends and Snapchat buddies who don't share anything meaningful.
"Somehow the person who won't say anything at all is even creepier than the person that said they did a bad thing," Norton said Thursday on Boston Public Radio.
"The world is moving even more toward, 'You're supposed to share everything all the time,' [on] Facebook, Twitter and everything, [and] there are many people that over-share that we don't like very much," Norton said. But: "We actually found that people that don't have Facebook pages are trusted less."
Norton said those Snapchat Stories and Ello missives let people know what you're about, and while familiarity may breed contempt, it doesn't breed suspicion.
Similarly, employers would rather see a potential employee passionately over-tweeting the NHL playoffs — for example — or posting dispatches from a Las Vegas bachelorette party than simply sitting on a Twitter handle with zero posts and an egg for a picture.
Norton noted employers now routinely and extensively parse social media before interviews.
"A very high percentage of employers said absolutely, you bet we do." And how did employers react when a a potential hire didn't have a Facebook account? "Well, what does that mean?" Norton said. "What are they hiding? What is being kept from me?"
The same familiarity and trust principles apply to political leaders. If Pres. Obama refused to answer a question of whether he'd done drugs, Norton said "our minds go a little crazy." "There's this very strong suspicion and lack of trust for people who say 'I'm just not going to answer that question.'"
Norton noted the principles could be taken a little too far, though.
"There was a great headline in Germany that said, 'not having a Facebook page could be a sign that you're a serial killer!'"
>>Michael Norton is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and the coauthor of Happy Money. He appears twice monthly on Boston Public Radio.
