Virtual Relationships in Social Media

• Self-disclosure in virtual relationships involves presenting an edited version of the self to others in the public domain.
• Individuals using social media exercise different levels of self-disclosure depending on whether they are presenting info publicly or privately.
• The absence of gating in virtual relationships means that there are no barriers to entry, allowing anyone to join and participate.
• A virtual relationship is a relationship that exists online, often through social media platforms.
• Virtual relationships in social media involve the interaction of individuals through online platforms.
• Self-disclosure in virtual relationships involves revealing personal information about oneself to another person online.
• People feel more secure about disclosing personal info in private- increased control over disclosure to a selected individual.
• When sharing self-disclosure in more visible with a wider audience people are more selective over content revealing info that is less private and less intimate.
• Individuals do not usually engage in self-disclosure with one another until they are confident that what they disclose remains confidential and would not be leaked to mutual acquaintances- confidentiality might be violated or the other person might respond negatively to the disclosure.
• Anonymity of internet interactions greatly reduces the risks of such disclosure because people can share their inner thoughts and feelings with much less fear of disapproval and sanction from the other person- self-disclosures with online acquaintances are similar to the strangers on the train.
• Rubin- we are more likely to disclose personal info to people we dont know and probably will never see again- stranger doesn’t have access to an individual’s social circle the confidentiality problem is less of an issue.
• Personal factors like physical appearance and mannerisms tend to determine whom we approach and we develop romantic relationships with.
• Rosenfeld and Thomas found that individuals without internet access were less likely to have a partner, with only 35.9% having a spouse or romantic partner, even after controlling for other important variables like age and gender.
• Use available features like attractiveness age or ethnicity to categorise potential partners before making a decision about whether we would like a relationship with that person.
• Baker and Oswald found that shy individuals find particular value in virtual relationships, with shy individuals who used Facebook more reporting higher perceptions of friendship quality.
• Rosenfeld and Thomas found no evidence to support the claim that relationships formed online are of lower quality and more temporary than relationships formed in more traditional ways.
• Zhao argued that we shouldn’t think of the online and offline world to be separate, with relationships formed online having consequences for people’s offline lives.
• Zhao found that the development of virtual relationships online allows some individuals to bypass gating obstacles and create the sort of identity that they are unable to establish in the offline world, with the main consequence being to enhance the individual’s overall self-image and so increase their chances to connect to others in the offline world.
• Rubin discovered that when confederates disclosed intimate information about their lives to the stranger next to them, this was often met with a reciprocal self-disclosure from the stranger.
• Tamir and Mitchell found evidence of a bio basis for the motivation to self-disclose on social media, with increased MRI activity in 2 brain regions that are associated with reward, the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area.
• Rubin conducted a series of studies where confederates disclosed personal information about themselves to strangers on trains, airport lounges, or when standing at bus stops.
• Rosenfeld and Thomas found that individuals with internet access at home were more likely to be partnered and less likely to be single, with 71.8% of those who had internet access at home having a spouse or romantic partner.
• In online relationships there’s an absence of these gates that normally limit the opportunities for thee less attractive, shy or less socially skilled to form relationships in face-2-face encounters.
• Because of the relative anonymity these barriers to interaction are not initially in evidence and so are less likely to stop potential relationships from getting off the ground- consequence of removing the traditional gating features that dominate initial liking and relationship formation is that a person’s true self is more likely to be active in Internet relationship than in face-to-face interactions.
• Zhao: online social networks can empower gated individuals to present the identities they hope to establish but are unable to in face-to-face situations- reduction of gating obstacles in the online environment also enables people to stretch the truth in their effort to project a self that is more socially desirable than their real offline identity
• Yurchisin : interviewed 11 online daters and found that individuals tended to give accounts of both their real and better selves in dating profiles as a way of attracting potential partners and some interviewees even admitted that they would steal other dates’ ideas or copy other people’s images as a way of making themselves more popular- find that most online identities were still close to a person’s true identity in order to avoid unpleasant surprises in a possible real-life encounter.