I’m ready for you to take umbrage at this, and I say that mostly because I’m secretly pleased to use the word “umbrage.” I don’t believe in generalities, but I can say this is true of most of the men and women I know—women are “better” at social media. I say better, because I think the most successful way to use social media is to focus on the “social” aspect.
Let me know if you disagree with any of these reasons:
- Women are detail-oriented: Especially when it comes to sharing details with one another, their children, their families, or their significant others. Even when it becomes painfully clear the first, second or third entity is no longer listening. Case in point—the last time I heard a man take a call announcing a new birth. The news when he got off the phone? A baby was born. No weight, sex, birth, or exciting/alarming labour stories. We women, we go mad-journalist for all those details. And then share lots of them on Facebook.
- Not a lot of men in the scrapbooking store: And I’ve been in a few. I have this odd fascination with the gorgeous patterned papers. Why is this relevant? Because Pinterest is a LOT like scrapbooking, and although I married a man who loves scrapbooking, I still claim that Pinterest is more X than Y chromosone. But if you need hard evidence, here’s one of many articles on the 82% female Pinterest stat.
- Moms are more likely to friend their children’s friends on Facebook than dads: It’s very possible dads know this and leave it up to the moms to maintain these new-age social relations, but in my world I’m the “friender” while my daughter’s dad says “Gah!” with a disgusted hand wave when the word “Facebook” comes up in conversation.
- THIS informative infographic! (Scroll down to the last stat about conversation and sharing.) Eh? Eh?
- Women are more comfortable learning than men: My proof of this is myself, because I will Google, Tweet, or otherwise jump on my phone when I’m curious about something, want to make something work, or am wondering why something stopped working. The men I know will diagnose, try to fix, ignore me waving my iPhone Google results, re-diagnose, try to re-fix, and then read what I found. I’m not saying men don’t want to learn at all, I’m saying women do it more often. And perhaps many women are more comfortable admitting they don’t have all the answers. I apologize for the generality.
What do you think—am I completely wrong, or do you smell some possible truth in this? Tell me!