The real mystery: why do people feel this need to post online about their lives to begin with?
MUCH as we are all loving this War of the Wags and lapping up the juicy details with great glee, one thing has been baffling me since this whole story broke last week.
I can understand why Coleen Rooney was annoyed and puzzled when personal information that she’d shared with her closest Instagram followers was turning up in the newspapers.
And I don’t blame her for wanting to get to the bottom of the mystery, even if it did mean setting a trap for one of those people who made up her most trusted circle.
What I really don’t get, though, is the great big elephant-in-the-room ‘why?’ of it all. Why does someone like Coleen feel the need to post private details on social media in the first place?
It’s not as if she’s given any hints that she’s looking to make a career as an influencer.
And even if she were, why would she have to post anything private? She has produced her own clothing line in the past, and all she has to do is wear a top or carry a bag for it to sell like hot cakes as soon as she’s pictured with the item in the media. She’s a popular guest on shows such as Loose Women, and there’d be no shortage of interest if she was looking to make a career in broadcasting.
She’s not part of a big brand like the Beckhams, with a particular image or lifestyle to sell. She’s a mum of four young boys and wife of a multi-millionaire footballer whom she clearly loves despite his being, as Hillary Clinton once said of Bill, ‘a hard old dog to keep on the porch’.
Most recently, for example, while she was pregnant with their fourth son, two years ago, Coleen was on holidays in Spain when Wayne was arrested for drink-driving in a car with a young woman he’d met in a nightclub. This episode, and others, both before and during their marriage, have helped generate huge public curiosity about the Rooneys and their relationship.
Intimacy
For two extremely rich young people, who like to shop and party and holiday and generally enjoy themselves, it must be hard enough to carve out a truly private area of your life from the wealth of personal information, embarrassing details and endless candid images that make up your public persona.
So why on earth would she plunder that increasingly small zone of domestic intimacy by putting deeply private snippets on Instagram in the first place?
The sort of material she’d been inventing and then sharing on her private account, with the intention of trapping her mole, was surely typical of her usual postings.
So, it seems likely that before she posted those invented stories, she had been posting equally personal real stories, which were then appearing in The Sun. But why? Surely if you wanted to discuss something so personal that you didn’t want it in the newspapers, you’d pick a close friend and talk it out over a bottle of wine?
When it comes to the ups and downs of everyday life, aren’t those the elements of what we once called ‘conversation’, the stuff of chats with friends or family whenever you got together? What is left to talk about, whenever these people meet in real life?
Or is the maintenance of a social media profile so all-consuming, these days, that real life no longer matters?
Since she values her privacy so highly that she’d go to the lengths she did, and potentially land herself in the British High Court fighting a defamation action with Rebekah Vardy, why is Coleen Rooney on social media at all? For no better reason, I suspect, than that that’s just what you do.
Without thinking it through, or questioning the benefits or contemplating the downsides, millions of people are daily baring the most private details of their lives so as to invite the responses of casual acquaintances and perfect strangers.
As someone who runs a mile from putting anything even remotely private online, I am astonished by the material that people share. Some are constantly bragging about their holidays, their homes, their jobs or their kids, presumably in the hopes of making the rest of us jealous of their idyllic lives.
Ironically, this can backfire horribly: apparently it is now possible to suffer depression due to envying yourself, comparing the fantastic fake life you’ve created online with the more mundane reality. And that’s before the trolls and the haters get to work on your posts.
Taunts
Others engage in so-called ‘sadfishing’, posting poignant or sorrowful stories on social media so as to invite sympathy and support from other users. Again, that opens the door to the nasty taunts of that huge portion of social media users who get their gratification from tearing others apart. And yet, much like Coleen Rooney mindlessly posting the most banal details of her life online because it’s just what you do, there’s little or no evidence of reflection on the ‘why’ of this phenomenon. The world throws enough pain your way – why expose yourself to needless upset in your one, finite life?
Recently, Bill Gates’s wife Melinda said that even though their kids didn’t get smartphones until they were well into their teens, if she went back in time, ‘I probably would have waited longer before putting a computer into my children’s pockets.’
For adolescents who don’t yet have the emotional tools to navigate life’s complications and confusions, she said, smartphones exacerbate the difficulties of growing up: learning to be kind, dealing with feelings of exclusion, balancing increasing freedoms with self-control.
Looking at the bitter spat between former pals Coleen and Rebekah, though, you’d have to wonder whether we adults are any better at navigating the online world. And since we’re hurting, threatening, humiliating, intimidating each other online – consider the experience of the blameless Ryan family, who’ve fled this country because of racist abuse, or the death threats now being directed at Rebekah Vardy – shouldn’t we be far more realistic about the resilience and maturity we expect of our children?
Yesterday, this paper carried the truly heartbreaking story of gorgeous little Kayleigh Ryan-Sheehan, a 14-year-old child who died after enduring a relentless bullying campaign on her Facebook page. Her mother Mary did all she could to protect her, but there’s only so much a parent can do in a climate where children see no alternative to engaging on social media.
Mockery
The option of opting out, the choice of choosing to close your Facebook or Instagram account, are rarely presented as legitimate alternatives. We are encouraged to teach our children how to deal with social media trolls and bullies, but not how to protect themselves by staying out of their orbit altogether.
Coleen Rooney doesn’t need the approval of strangers online; she didn’t need to risk derision, mockery and exposure by sharing humdrum details just to keep her social media account active. And when you stop and think about it, who does?
Social media has its benefits but, far too often, the negatives outweigh the good. It would be a real boon to impressionable young people if someone like Coleen made the decision to step away from social media and declare that she doesn’t want that grief in her life anymore.
It would be an excellent example for her own small sons, and a huge boost to parents struggling to convince their vulnerable teenagers that life without social media is not as unthinkable as it might seem.