The Digital Gaze: Perspective in Social Media

Perspective matters in the media. The way that we view content affects our understanding of it, what we learn from it, and how it makes us feel. Many social media trends are arising that reinforce this importance, such as the male gaze debate and POV videos. We’re becoming more aware of how the way content is created affects how that content is perceived by the viewer.

For most of its history, the primary perspective on Facebook and Instagram was that of an uninvolved third party, where the camera shows randomized snapshots that coalesce into a not-so-complete picture of what one’s life looks like, with the exception of selfies. Directly addressing the camera was mostly reserved for YouTubers. We obviously still maintain the third party perspective’s facade — look at the popularity of not looking at the camera or the covering-the-face pose in Instagram pictures.

Breaking that facade by addressing the camera directly is becoming more common in more social media platforms than YouTube, partially due to TikTok and its subsequent mimicry by Instagram and Snapchat. It impacts our understanding of the content, to recognize that this is the direct wish of the poster. But even in candid content, the messages and intentions are still direct, it’s just unapparent to the viewer in the moment. It’s a layering of perspectives that we don’t even think about because we’re so accustomed to content being framed as only one perspective or the other. Why would you question the camera angle unless you’re a film student or media critic?

Any mixing of the third and second person perspectives is known in traditional media as breaking the fourth wall — acknowledging that the other three walls are a facade, the fourth wall is the one between the performer and audience. We know this wall was broken by social media for quite some time, as Bo Burnham asserted this in the finale of his 2016 special, Make Happy.

It might seem a little too meta (pun intended) to think critically about how you look at content and how others make content to be looked at, but I believe it’s an important mindfulness ability to work toward in the quest for digital wellness. The perspective in visual media is a bit like a narrator, and narrators are known to be unreliable at times.

The false belief that your personalized feed is the only valid reality does not lead to wellness. Realizing that not every piece of content’s perspective is true helps to disrupt this belief. It’s a matter of catching yourself in the act of assuming things about content, and taking the time to examine whether or not they’re true or false, intentional or unintentional. This does not mean to mistrust your own eyes, but it does ask that you question the assumptions made by the perspective of the content.

What do you think? Leave your thoughts below!