Farewell to the Boasting of Posting: Encouraging Modesty on Social Media

The authors agree with Miravalle (2017) that ‘communications technology has brought with it a radical challenge to the virtue of modesty’ (p. 173). Because of the normalisation of online boasting, it is necessary for students, who are or soon will be employed, to understand the implications of posting their successes on social media. After discussing the pervasiveness of boastful posts and reviewing the research indicating the inverse association between individuals’ routine exposure to posts depicting the curated lives and accomplishments of friends and acquaintances and their emotional well-being, we explore what the virtue of modesty entails. Then, the authors discuss how they have raised their students’ awareness that modesty matters, clarified for them what it is, and given them techniques to help them work towards it.