Why sorrow and struggle often go unseen on social media

You may have noticed an interesting phenomenon on social media: Positive posts – focusing on accomplishments, milestones, and well-wishes – get a lot of “likes.” But posts that involve complaints or personal struggles get a lot fewer.

You might think that people just don’t want to be exposed to negativity. And, as we’ll see, you’d be right. But there’s more to it than that.

Some posts you might think of as negative get a lot of response. Take deaths of public figures, for instance. News of celebrity passings is widely shared and typically results in an outpouring of shock and grief.

Why should this kind of negative news be any different?

One reason may be that people can’t be construed as “complaining” about people dying. They’re just sad. Besides, celebrity deaths are shared occurrences, because many people feel a connection to them. Someone who shares news of a celebrities death isn’t lamenting something personal, but sharing common grief. People tend to be more comfortable if they feel included rather than absorbing news about someone they don’t know.

Unlike celebrity deaths, complaints and other kinds of negative news, can create either pressure, guilt, or both. For example, if a friend complains about going through hard times financially and you’re doing well, you might feel implicit pressure to help out or guilt that you’re doing better. Guilt might also come into play if you have a job and they’ve lost theirs – especially if it’s in the same field or with the same company.

Feeling powerless

Then there are more general complaints, against things such as institutions, medical costs, or corporate greed. In cases such as these, your friends may actually share your frustrations. But they may feel so powerless to do anything that your posts merely remind them of how helpless and vulnerable they already feel. No one likes to be reminded of that, so chances are they’ll quickly bypass those posts and try to ignore them.

People want to have hope, and in a world with a widening wage gap and polarized opinions, negative posts don’t give social media users hope; they just reinforce feelings of despair. This “social contagion” phenomenon isn’t just speculation on my part. A recent study involving researchers from Cornell and the University of California analyzed more than 689,000 Facebook users found that when positive posts were removed, users were more likely to post negative comments. The opposite was true when negative posts were removed.

What the study didn’t address was whether, in a neutral environment, users preferred to see (and “liked”) positive or negative posts more often. But another study found that those who expressed a lot of negative emotions were less liked than those whose posts were more positive. And additional research showed that users are far more likely to share positive news: in fact, four times more likely than they are to share negative posts.

Maybe this is why Facebook has resisted including a thumbs-down “dislike” emoji. People are far more apt to enjoy seeing a smiley face, a laughing emoji, a heart, or a “care” than an angry face.

Impersonal interaction

Another revelation: People are more likely to be comfortable with in-person disclosures of negative events than they are about the same information shared online. Maybe that’s because it’s a lot easier to just throw something out there online than it is to share something face-to-face; it just seems more impersonal on social media. Many people prefer in-person communication because it’s the full experience, complete with facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice, rather than just text on a screen. Maybe, also, it’s because there’s so much negativity online already that any additional bad news is just too much of a downer to process. (Some of us remember being uncomfortable watching TV commercials about starving children in Ethiopia; it’s the same principle.)

Whatever the reasons, it’s clear that negative posts online just don’t have the same appeal or traction that positive posts and comments do. In a way, that’s natural, but it can also be unfortunate. Cries for help can go unheeded, and people in need of encouragement can feel even more isolated when their posts go ignored.

But that’s the way it is.

If you’re trying to boost social engagement or just be a force for good online, the best way to do it is to – in the words of Monty Python – always look on the bright side of life.

Stephen H. Provost is a former journalist, editor, and author of more than 40 books. He feels pretty positive about that!