Psychologist Dr. John Suler: Some of the mechanisms that reduce people’s inhibitions in social media interaction: Dissociative anonymity: It is easy to hide and be anonymous in social media, indeed, many Twitter and Facebook users do not use their real name (although this is changing now on Facebook) and users who post comments on YouTube, Reddit and such are also under no obligation to use their real names. This anonymity is dissociative because when posting comments or interacting online, users often do not have to take personal responsibility for their comments. This can lead to more extreme and intense conversations than people would be willing to engage in when face-to-face. Invisibility: It is literally possible to be invisible in certain social media environments: Whether you are viewing someone’s profile or page, watching videos or reading the comments on a thread, you don’t have to worry about how you look, how you sound, how people perceive your body language. Often there is a level of passive participation, when you can be viewing someone’s page, pictures or comments… and this person does not even know that you are there! Asynchronicity: Unlike in real life, social media interactions do not necessarily happen in real time- often there can be a delay of hours or days in between comments, giving people plenty of time to come up with witty responses, or worse, leave you hanging. People can put ideas or hurtful comments out there in a type of ‘emotional hit and run’ where they can just make these remarks, and then run away and ignore your response. This definitely wouldn’t fly in real life!
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 09:29:29 +0000
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