App Jumping

I hesitated to take part in the “breaking social media norms” challenge because I take a lot of pride in keeping with the norms. So, instead of being too public with my attempt, I decided to play a little game of app jumping with my friend.

My first attempt didn’t go well, because he played along thinking I was just being funny.

Second attempt: I had to wait awhile for him to message me outside of our usual group chat. I lucked out when he asked me about an photo collage app I use for my Instagram.

I quickly moved from our text chat to Facebook where I responded. I could already tell he was confused about what had just happened but didn’t say anything yet.

I decided to go extreme with this by sending a two part message on two different platforms. I moved over to Twitter to finish my message to him.

My friend was totally confused by what was going on, and I almost felt as if he was getting frustrated with me. It was actually pretty funny, so I popped over to Instagram.

While I was messaging him on Instagram he attempted to move us back to text where he sent me the photo.

I decided to go one step further and email him. This is where he decided he was done messing around.

Game over. I told him what I was up to and he laughed. He told me that he was getting nervous that he would miss one of my responses because he had forgotten what apps he had turned notifications on for. This nervousness was leading him to being frustrated that I wasn’t following the social norms of what it means to have “normal” conversation online.

This is why social norms are important. They provide a guideline for what to expect within a given situation. For this case, using the same app to communicate back and forth is the normal because for whatever reason it appears more fluid. Everyone is more than capable of doing what I just did, maybe not to the same extreme, but typically with few exceptions do we commit such a crime.

If we didn’t have social media norms, I believe social media wouldn’t have the fluidity that it does now. It’s easy to participate in something once you know the rules as Cognitive Surplus explained. There’s a social norm to “You can play this game too.”