Absence of gating

• > Face to face relationships in the modern world can experience many gates that can affect the early development of a relationship between two people

  > Gates could include physical attractiveness, social anxiety and stammers
• Benefits of absence of gating

  > The effect of the absence of gates is that relationships can progress to a point where self-disclosure can occur, away from superficial features

  > This encourages virtual relationships to reach a deeper level a lot quicker then face to face relationships as people focus on what is being said rather then what the other looks like
• Drawbacks of absence of gating

  > Absence of gating can also lead to individuals creating an online image that they would not be able to uphold in face-to-face relationships, for example, an introvert can express himself or herself as an extrovert or a man could present themselves as women

  > This can lead to untrue self-disclosure in virtual relationships as people can freely create any kind of avatar to represent themselves in a virtual reality.
• Absence of gating AO3

  :) RTS McKenna and Barge

  > They investigated online communication by shy, lonely and social anxious people.

  > They found that these people were able to express their ‘true selves’ more virtually than in FtF situations. 71 % of these relationships formed online by shy people survived at least 2 years in comparison to shy people in the outside world (49 %)

  > This supports absence of gating in virtual relationships in social media as shy people were able to benefit from online relationships due to the usual ‘gates’ from ftf relationships being removed
• Absence of gating AO3

  :( Relationships are multi-modal

  > This means our relationships are maintained both online and offline rather than ‘either/or’

  > What we choose to disclose in virtual relationships is influenced by our offline interactions and vice versa, suggesting the relationship between absence of gates and self-disclosure in virtual relationships is more complex

  > Therefore, this limits absence of gating on the nature of virtual relationships.