You must have come across many people on social media who always tell lies. They lie through their teeth and don’t feel ashamed. Their lies can be in the form of making outright false posts and tweets, imparting misinformation, spreading rumors, and sharing unverified facts and data. 

Why do they do so? Is this by accident or by design? 

People fib on social media for a number of reasons. In this article, I have tried to find out some most plausible reasons for their falsehood on social media. Let’s dive into details without further ado.

1. To Seek Attention 

People tell lies on social media to draw public attention. They believe that a lie sells faster than the truth. It is a fact that we generally prefer to read or listen to something unique. So people invent lies and share these lies on social media. They get likes and comments for their uncommon stuff and feel encouraged. Thus a vicious cycle starts, and they keep on lying without feeling embarrassed.

2. To Become Popular

Humans are intrinsically attention-seeker. They need recognition and admiration from their fellows. They want to become prominent and popular among other people. To achieve this end, they can indulge in any sort of activity. Social media provides them with an ideal platform to promote themselves through impersonation and lying about themselves.

Such attention-hungry people, therefore, employ different tactics to gain popularity in cyberspace. They engage in all sorts of antics to go viral on social media. They tell lies about themselves, their families, their education, and everything concerning them.

3. To Influence Others

Social media users also tell fibs to influence their followers. They distort facts and figures to bring home their point of view. They disseminate disinformation to advance their fabricated views. The majority of social media users never bother to cross-check the facts being fed to them. Hence, they are duped into believing whatever they are told by such demagogues. 

4. Lying Because of Affiliations 

Almost all of us have our political affiliations, and no person can claim to be apolitical. These political attachments make people blind to opposing opinions. They find it difficult to digest the views of their opponents. They don’t believe in an open and meaningful debate. Their only purpose is to win the argument. Thus, they don’t hesitate in telling lies to prove their point.

Likewise, religious affiliations also make people to be economical with the truth. Going against the very teachings of the religion, they claim to follow; they keep churning out lies to impress their followers on social media.

5. People Don’t Care Much About Ethics

People also spread lies on social media because they have no regard for ethics. Social and moral values have no significance in their life. They don’t feel guilty about their false talk on social media, because they have lulled their conscience to sleep. Hence, they blatantly tell lies, distort facts, and peddle misinformation to advance their agenda. 

6. Psychological Issues Make People Fib

Psychological issues are another reason for people to spread lies on social media. Some people suffer from an inferiority complex. They compare themselves to other people and feel that they are not as good as others. In order to overcome this complex, they pretend to possess some extraordinary talent. They brag about themselves and their achievements, by telling lies on social media.

Final Words

There are many people on social media who are inveterate liars. These people have no qualms about lying to others. They choose to tell lies because of a variety of reasons, such as:

• People lie on social media to get public attention
• They tell lies to become popular
• Some social media users indulge in lying to influence others
• Political and religious affiliations also make people tell the untruth
• People having no moral values also indulge in falsehood
• Psychological issues such as inferiority complex also make people fib