Top 10 Discoveries on Social Media Engagement — Ten Years Later

It’s been ten years since I wrote Ten Things I Learned on Social Media. As I reflect on those thoughts—especially how little I knew then, like someone exploring new discoveries—I realize there is more to question, to delve into, to verify, to substantiate, and to qualify.

The discoveries have become more circumspect, especially with the rapid advancement of AI. Just today, in a very live moment of validation, I had a telling interaction. Someone on my Facebook— a close friend,  someone who shares our Caribbean roots and knows my family—called me in a questioning voice and asked about my nephew. Alarmed, I asked if there was something I should know.

She said a Facebook post naming him indicated he had passed. I chose to be deliberate and intentional with this information; we are a large family circle, and such news would be tragic. My first action was to call my nephew directly. When he answered—live and in person—the momentary trauma of what could have been was immediately quelled. We had an affirming conversation and agreed: nothing is fact until verified.

This is the warped challenge current social media alarms create. Ten years ago it was not as viciously pervasive. The aging of AI-influenced social media begs for the curation of human authenticity against viral sharing.

This post revisits and expands on my earlier reflections: Ten Things I Learned on Social Media (2015).

1) Curation is a conscience

I curate my posts from what is happening around me, from what stirs my visual and intellectual response. Whether it’s music, dance, poetry, or current events, the act of bonding with a post—giving it context and meaning—is integral to how I shape my thoughts and then convey them into writing. I accept that perfection is not my ideal. I strive instead to be constructive, comprehensive, and thoughtful.

2) Virtual life is real life (handle with care)

The characters and ideations we create online may not always mirror the truth with conviction or validation. The persona behind a keyboard is rarely the full measure of a person in the real. What too often gets obscured in the virtual realm is feeling. More and more, expression is geared to be abstract—thoughts and themes offered as if they were, not as they are.

3) Attention is a currency

In the actuality of now, the “currency” of clicks is what drives influence and determines whether a post is seen. It is less about what you say or how you say it, and more about what an algorithm calculates as value. The science of shared information has become more important than the conscience behind it.

Attention is a currency. Spend it like money.

4) Slow beats loud

For the lay person who engages, there is always a mathematical algorithm charting what a post can generate in reach. That reach is quarantined and pre-set by the machinery, where human connection is contested by digital oversight. True resonance doesn’t come from loud spikes—it emerges slowly, from meaning carried forward.

5) Tell the truth in your own key

In the geography of social media, what we share becomes part of our permanent digital footprints. Being conscientious about value, context, and impact will form the roadmap for how the next generation understands us. This digital legacy will stand in for what true representation meant.

6) Platforms aren’t neutral

Our humanity sits under digital scrutiny, dispensed in numbered tallies of code that can be skewed or subjective. Algorithms tilt the floor, deciding what is amplified and what is buried. We must rely on human validity and verification, lest the virtual landscape be monsooned in apparition.

7) Screens are mirrors

Try to leverage your sanctuary. Don’t be swooned by expectations that are unrealistic. Stay cautious, stay discerning, but also remain optimistic. What we recoil from online may reveal our own fears, and what we admire may point toward what we long for.

8) Silence is also speech

Not posting is still posting. Choosing when to withhold, when to listen, when to let a moment breathe—that is part of the vocabulary of this space.

9) Community is the algorithm that matters

One share from a trusted friend is worth more than a hundred likes from strangers. The richest value of engagement is to lend cooperative understanding, to distill and refine the best of what we can offer rather than the worst.

10) Grace is the last word

Forgiveness in comment sections, patience in misunderstanding, gentleness in the face of trolling—these are not soft qualities, they are strength. Grace online is rehearsal for grace offline. And in this rapidly changing dimension, grace is still the ground we stand on.

Ten years later, I’m still learning. Maybe we all are. The call is the same: practice discernment, guard your attention, and center human truth over the feed.

Want to see where these reflections began? Read my original post: Ten Things I Learned on Social Media.

A closing note in my own key.