Social networking is fab, isn't it? The rekindled
friendships, the fun quizzes and game applications, the mind-altering, crippling
anxiety...
This could
just be the before-effects of Memorial Day bar-b-que fumes decaying my remaining brain matter, but I
think it's time to coin a new buzzphrase: Social Networking Anxiety Disorder,
or as we'll call it from here on out, SNAD.
To be clear, SNAD is a bit different from
what psychiatrists have defined as Social Anxiety Disorder, or SAD. According
to the DSM IV, the guidebook to all things mental, SAD is "a persistent fear of one
or more social or performance situations in which the person is exposed to
unfamiliar people or to possible scrutiny by
others" (a.k.a. "Life").
SNAD, on the other hand, is caused by stress from the pressures of social networking: the constant Friend
requests, Scrabulous requests, photo tag requests, group and event invitations... Consider also the anxiety of creating things like
"limited profiles," carefully managing how much of ourselves to reveal
to our virtual associates -- and that accompanying, nagging, guilty
question: "Will this person realize I restricted his ability to see my
Super Wall?"
Speaking on a recent O'Reilly Webcast (The Facebook Application Ecosystem: Why Some Thrive -- and Most Don't), Shelly Farnham, doctor of social psychology, said, "A common
problem in social networking applications is it's hard to say no to people who want to be
your friend," adding that a number of applications ease this pain by allowing you to isolate 25 Friends (e.g., Top Friends).
But what about when someone you don't consider to be a "Top Friend" per se requests to be part of that elite list? Truth be told, our social algorithms and applications just can't capture the complexities of human relationships.
Not sure if you're suffering? Here are three symptoms of SNAD to look out for. If you have any of these, you should contact your mental-health-professional avatar immediately.
1. You were considering breaking up with your significant other, but decided to stick it out because of the anxiety associated with changing your Relationship Status on Facebook and de-tagging hundreds of photos.
2. You currently have 36+ Friend requests festering on Facebook or MySpace, which have built up month over month because you don't want your rejection to send these strangers on a downward, emotional spiral.
3. You belong to several groups including "I Skin Cats on Sundays" and "Cousins Make Great Husbands," because, well, they were nice enough to invite you...
Silly symptoms aside, it's true that there's a certain anxiety that comes along with social networking, whether it's from the pressure of keeping people up to date, or the guilt in rejecting a Friend request. Certainly, if we recognize something like Internet Addiction and set up camps for the sufferers, we can recognize the mental tolls of social networking.
You could, of course, just make your profile private to all but a few special Friends. But once one less special Friend finds out you have a profile you've never told her about, it's right back to the days of nail biting, hives, and Lexapro.
MShellC, you're probably right. I suppose if a person doesn't really have any consideration for other people it's much easier to deal with things like rejecting friend requests and invitations and such. Or it doesn't even have to be that extreme, but I imagine that however you deal with people in your real life is similar to how you deal with them online. The less socially anxious you are offline, perhaps the less socially anxious you are online?
I think this really stems from how you are in real life because your personal issues tend to follow you wherever you go. I work on a kid's site where they get to be Heroes and Villains. We also have adults on the site. The adults are worst than the kids! If an adult is having a bad day, chances are they are logging on to work out their aggressions. Usually that means that they target someone else and use them as their virtual punching bag. I thought that only kids did this but I soon found out that duh, the kids learned it from somewhere...
SNAD is real. While 'celebrities'(at least the ones that get it) are utilzing facebook and the like(MySpace & hi5(?)) for being in better touch with their fanbase, variation exists for its use by 'regular' people that range from networks with only real friends to extending their real social life.
Suddenly, one of the top 10 most hated web2.0 buzz words has a bite -'friending' = real life social 'catty' gone digital.
it's really interesting to see how "old" good disorders find their new shapes in the Internet. Can't say "no" to a person you don't know, who asks you to becomes the friend-well, you have a big problem,pal, in real life.
It's a little bit funny, at first, people spoke about the Internet like about anonimity place-where you can behaved the way you wanted- you could be rude, nice, male, female,dog..and suddenly somebody can't say "no" I don't want to participate in your group?!!! I hardly believe it!
You're right. The stress alone of having to manage what you post/say on social networking sites, coupled with wondering who will read it, who we should hide it from, etc., is a big factor here. Aside from that, you have to worry about if a third party posts photos of you or makes a comment on your wall you wouldn't otherwise want people to see. Now, you have to be extra cautious when in public, because you never know who is going to capture your behavior in a photo, post it on Facebook, tag you, and ruin your life as you know it.
When you accept a friend (known or new) request of person of the opposite gender (doesn't seem to be a problem for those of the homosexual orientation, how can you rule out your own gender?), and your significant other gets jealous? This even led to the shooting of a young man by an enraged girlfriend, over him having females' profiles on his friends list, in one instance.
Social networking can be useful, but its primary dysfunction is that it throws out in the open so many things that used to be private, such as what you really think about other people, who are your real friends, who are your enemies, etc. I've had a few experiences where I wasn't sure how to gague someone based on their actions from a social network site... usually though one must combat the anxiety, and deal with such situations as one has always needed to when one is not sure about the relationship - act as if everything is just fine!
I need the Internet. I must have it. My own particular form of SNAD comes from the fact that I just can't keep up with all the things the social network sites need. I'm a bad SNer.
It's certainly not that I get too many friend requests. At least not most of the time, or on most SN sites.
It might be because (like the wonderful song from Oklahoma) I can't say no.
It might be because I'm so incredibly lazy about keeping up any sort of regular social networking activity and have absolutely never managed to keep a blog going for more than a couple of days. No, that couldn't be it. No way. Not me.
================================================
Great post, Nicole! [For anyone that missed the really obvious symbolism of the above series of equal signs -- that's the BOTTOM LINE!]
Sure, you can always "unfriend" someone. But then you have to live with the guilt. That person may at some point realize his friend list is suddenly one short and from there on out, one question will haunt his dreams: WHY?!
You're right, though. It's very easy to feel bad about oneself when scouting around on these social networking sites. Everyone knows that people use their social networking profiles as platforms to boast to their "friends" about how great their lives are. For example, many of my connections are twenty-somethings and a few are starting to get engaged. And I'm consistently amused that within hours of their romanttticccc engagements, these girls are at home posting photos of their rings and the Kodak moments of their engagements on Facebook. And, of course, their relationship status immediately changes to engaged. On the one hand, it's a nice and easy way to update people on your life. But, it's also a great way to make people feel a little bad about themselves. For some people, that's the best part about social networking. For me, it's all just blog fodder.
Re: "Thus, the question. Do we have SNAD or do we create SNAD in others with our efforts to do social networking?"
It's a vicious cycle, I think. I blame the people who I am not very good friends with for sending me obnoxious game, group, and event requests for my SNAD. But, in truth, we are all at fault. Now that I've discovered this disease, I will think twice before sending out group invites or even writing on someone's wall. If they don't have time to return the favor, they may witness the onset of SNAD.
Yes, we could avoid SNAD in total if we just didn't sign onto these social networking sites. But it may be too late for most people. And as much as you may avoid social networking in your personal life, social networking is becoming more prevalent in the workplace. The first symptom of SNAD is the feeling that you have to start social networking because everyone else is, and this fear you're missing out on something. From what I'm hearing, this is the feeling in the enterprise, and more and more corporations are asking their employees to join social networks to host work-related discussions and keep each other up to date. SNAD will only get more serious as we start to find it necessary to social network for the sake of being team players in the workplace.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
Ahh, the holiday season is upon us: People have begun bargain hunting, department stores are donning premature decorations, turkeys are being shot to death, and email inboxes everywhere are being graced with season-appropriate promotional materials so absurd, one might think they were actually written by the clinically insane.
Considering President Obama went and took the Nobel Peace Prize this year (attention hog, much?), Internet Evolution had to settle for a nomination for the second best prize in the world: a MIN Editorial & Design award. And we're happy to say that we won. Big time.
NEW YORK -- Web 2.0 Expo -- Here at the Javits Center in New York City, several industry innovators have come out to take the stage at the Web 2.0 Expo. But some are having a hard time keeping the audience's attention. The culprit? What else? Twitter.
The debate over whether Google is fairly aggregating newspaper content online has been going on for a while, with Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. leading the discourse. Typically it's followed a consistent pattern: Murdoch complains about Google stealing its content to no real benefit to his company, someone suggests hiding the content from Google, and things get quiet on the News Corp. side of the room.
While Google introduces its new Chrome OS (which I'm hearing will be widely available in one year? Did I mishear that?), IBM announced 10 new products today to help companies using IBM System z mainframe technology.
Smarter Collaboration: How to Thrive in a Challenging Business Environment Market conditions are changing faster than ever, and organizations need to improve their agility and adaptability in order to provide better service and improve processes. The ability to work with customers, business partners, and employees as effectively as possible - while at the same time holding down costs - is a key to success. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
Evidence shows that you can tweet too much. Sites and services like Twitter and Facebook are a good place to reach your audience, but think quality over quantity.
A digital content market is emerging. Only two things are known about it: the first is that at some point the Internet will primarily become a paid network. The second known factor is that there are innumerable variables in the digital content market that have yet to be worked out. It’s not known, for example, exactly how users will pay for content (micropayments, subscriptions, bartering of farm animals, other).
Bad news! By eliminating the world’s digital divide we’re likely to create a new divide: the information divide, where we end up creating a two-tier Internet where access to 'quality' content is controlled and charged for by mega-corporations, and the gulf between information haves and have-nots is entirely dependent on how much money they have. This is, of course, an almost exact inversion of the current situation on the Internet – where access is expensive and content is free.
As enterprises leap into the Web 2.0 world of blogging, commenting, and social networking, just 'being there' won't deliver ROI. You may want a 'Web Evangelist' to systematically harvest the feedback in order to polish your product or service.
Good news! The cost of Internet infrastructure, services, and access devices has been plummeting at an accelerating rate over the last 10 years and will approach a point in the next 20 years where these technologies become so fantastically cheap that ubiquitous, low-cost, high-speed networks, storage, and access devices will effectively eliminate the digital divide for most of the world's population.
What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
By 2011 the number of Internet-connected sensors will exceed 1 trillion, making your chances of doing anything or going anywhere unnoticed pretty much zero. Saunders talks about how the 'sensortization' of the Internet is eliminating the traditional divide between online and offline populations.
The 20th Century Internet was characterized by the ability to interact with other people and information on the Internet largely without anyone knowing who you were. The Internet of this century, conversely, will be defined by identity. Saunders explains how Internet users are unwittingly contributing to the demise of the anonymous Internet.
Industry initiatives and government stimulus funds are giving enterprise software vendors a great opportunity to help build out and manage smart grid technologies.
The problem with telepresence is that it's not universally accepted, because video calling isn't. While we can all do video calling, we also apparently worry too much about how we look. If we want HD telepresence in our future, we have to dress down, mess up our hair, and dive into our online life.
The US loses about $20 billion a year on pirated software, movies, and music. But public policy can help stem the tide of digital theft. For example, France has recently passed a 'three strikes and you’re out' law, whereby if after two warning letters an individual continues to download pirated software then his Internet access will be cut off. US policy makers should consider adopting similar policies.
Financial management planning does not need to include Voodoo economics, but it does help to tap into the knowledge base of your team through some sort of real-time system. We explore your options.
When Reiter gets incensed over incompetent Verizon FiOS order-taking and support, he broadcasts it via Twitter. Did it do any good? How should your company offer Twitter support? Watch this for all the answers.
The successor to the BlackBerry Bold 9000 – the Bold 9700 – will be available soon in the US. Is it worth upgrading? Reiter's got one, and offers advice.
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Email This
TWEET THIS
