Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Facebook
Author Credit: futurecomms.co.uk
The Psychology Behind Facebook
A new study from Boston University has looked at why people use Facebook. But not in the conventional ‘to keep in touch with friends’ or ‘to share photos’ sense. Oh no, this is FAR more interesting.
The study looks at human needs (think Maslow) and attempts to explain where Facebook fits within that context. The authors’ proposition is that Facebook (and other social networks) meets two primary human needs. The first is the need to belong to a sociodemographic group of like-minded people (linked to self-esteem and self-worth). Given this ‘need to belong’, it is hypothesised that there are differences in the way people use and share on Facebook according to cultural factors (individualistic v collectivist cultures). The thing is, some studies have suggested that being active on Facebook may not improve self-esteem, so we may be kidding ourselves if that’s (partly) why we use it!
The second need is the need for self-presentation. Further studies suggest that the person people portray on Facebook IS the real person, not an idealised version. BUT, it’s a person as seen through a socially-desirable filter. In other words, we present ourselves as highly sociable, lovable and popular even if we sit in our bedrooms in the dark playing World of Warcraft ten hours a day. There’s an aspirational element to our online selves. And hey, for me that’s certainly true – I’m a miserable sod in real life!
It’s a fascinating topic area, an understanding of which could really help marketers. Click the Source link below to read more about this study and lots of associated material. But in the meantime, stop showing off on Facebook and start just being yourself :o)
(Source: readwriteweb.com)
iPhone Addiction: Does Smart Phone = Dumber You?
It’s not much of a leap to extrapolate from the GPS to the smartphone. A normal cellphone can remember numbers for you so that you no longer have to do so. Confess– can you remember the actual cellphone number of the people you call most frequently? We used to rely on our neurons to hold onto these crucial bits of information. Now they reside somewhere out there in the ether. What’s worse is that most people don’t even take the time to write down a new phone number anymore. You call your new acquaintance and your new acquaintance calls you, and the information is automatically stored in your contacts. It’s great for efficiency’s sake, but you’ve now given your working memory one less important exercise. Memory benefits from practice, especially in the crucial stage of encoding. Let’s move from phone numbers to information in general. People with smartphones no longer have to remember important facts because when in doubt, they can just tap into Google. When was the last time St. Louis was in the World Series, you wonder? Easy! Just enter a few letters (not even the whole city name) into your “smart” search engine. Your fingers, much less your mind, don’t have to walk very far at all. Trying to give your brain a workout with a crossword puzzle? What’s to stop you from taking a few shortcuts when the answers are right there on your phone? No mental gymnastics necessary. This leads us to Siri, that seductress of the smartphone. With your iPhone slave on constant standby, you don’t even have to key in your questions. Just say the question, and Siri conjures up the answer in an instant. With a robot at your fingertips, why even bother to look the information up yourself? The irony is that smartphones have the potential to make our brains sharper, not dumber. Researchers are finding that videogame play involving rapid decision-making can hone your cognitive resources. Older adults, in particular, seem to be able to improve their attentional and decision-making speeded task performance when they play certain games. People with a form of amnesia in which they can’t learn new information can also be helped by smartphones, according to a study conducted by Canadian researchers (Svobodo & Richards, 2009). The problem is not the use of the smartphone itself; the problem comes when the smartphone takes over a function that your brain is perfectly capable of performing. It’s like taking the elevator instead of the stairs; the ride may be quicker but your muscles won’t get a workout. Smartphones are like mental elevators. Psychologists have known for years that the “use it or lose it” principle is key to keeping your brain functioning in its peak condition throughout your life. As we become more and more drawn to these sleeker and sexier gadgets, the trick will be learning how to “use it.” So take advantage of these 5 tips to help your smartphone keep you smart: 1. Don’t substitute your smartphone for your brain. Force yourself to memorize a phone number before you store it, and dial your frequently called numbers from memory whenever possible. If there’s a fact or word definition you can infer, give your brain the job before consulting your electronic helper. 2. Turn off the GPS app when you’re going to familiar places. Just like the GPS-hippocampus study showed, you need to keep your spatial memory as active as possible by relying on your brain, not your phone, when you’re navigating well-known turf. If you are using the GPS to get around a new location, study a map first. Your GPS may not really know the best route to take (as any proper Bostonian can tell you!). 3. Use your smartphone to keep up with current events. Most people use their smartphones in their leisure time for entertainment. However, with just a few easy clicks, you can just as easily check the headlines, op-eds, and featured stories from respected news outlets around the world. This knowledge will build your mental storehouse of information, and make you a better conversationalist as well. 4. Build your social skills with pro-social apps. Some videogames can actually make you a nicer person by strengthening your empathic tendencies. Twitter and Facebook can build social bonds. Staying connected is easier than ever, and keeping those social bonds active provides you with social support. Just make sure you avoid some of the social media traps of over-sharing and FOMO (fear of missing out) syndrome. 5. Turn off your smartphone while you’re driving. No matter how clever you are at multitasking under ordinary circumstances, all experts agree that you need to give your undivided attention to driving when behind the wheel. This is another reason to look at and memorize your route before going someplace new. Fiddling with your GPS can create a significant distraction if you find that it’s given you the wrong information. Smartphones have their place, and can make your life infinitely more productive as long as you use yours to supplement, not replace, your brain. Reference: Svoboda, E., & Richards, B. (2009). Compensating for anterograde amnesia: A new training method that capitalizes on emerging smartphone technologies. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 15(4), 629-638. doi:10.1017/S1355617709090791 Follow Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. on Twitter @swhitbo for daily updates on psychology, health, and aging and please check out my website,www.searchforfulfillment.com where you can read this week’s Weekly Focus to get additional information, self-tests, and psychology-related links.
Related articles
- Why Do So Many Robots Have A Woman’s Voice? [Technology] (jezebel.com)
- Siri lets strangers control some iPhone functions (redtape.msnbc.msn.com)
Shyness, Loneliness And Facebook:Is It Easier To Be Friends In Cyberspace?
Read The Original Study In Full Here
Do shy individuals prefer socializing on the internet? And if so, do they become less shy while on the internet and have more friends?
In 2009, the journal CyberPsychology and Behavior published an article that investigated this issue. Specifically, the researchers investigated the relationship between shyness and Facebook use.
The study was conducted by Emily S. Orr and her colleagues from the University of Windsor.
To examine this relationship, 103 undergraduate students from a university in Ontario completed an online questionnaire that assessed self-reported shyness, time spent on Facebook, number of Facebook friends, and attitudes towards Facebook.
The results of this questionnaire indicated that shy individuals tended to have fewer Facebook friends and reported spending more time on Facebook. They were also more likely to have a more favorable attitude towards Facebook than those who were less shy.
Orr and her colleagues believe that the relative anonymity provided by Facebook may explain the increased use of and favorable attitude towards Facebook.
Shy individuals may find Facebook appealing because of “the anonymity afforded by online communication, specifically, the removal of many of the verbal and nonverbal cues associated with face-to-face interactions,” as Orr and her colleagues explain.
Those who find face-to-face communication uncomfortable may use Facebook as a way to remain connected to the social world while avoiding physical social interaction.
“These findings suggest that although shy individuals do not have as many contacts on their Facebook profiles, they still regard this tool as an appealing method of communication and spend more time on Facebook than do nonshy individuals.”
Reference:
Orr, E.S., Sisic, M., Ross, C., Simmering, M.G., Arsenault, J.M. & Orr, R.R. (2009). The influence of shyness on the use of facebook in an undergraduate sample. CyberPsychology and Behavior, Vol 12, No 3: 337-340.
Read The Original Study In Full Here
Related articles
- Is social media unfair on shy people? (thenextweb.com)
- Shyness, I hope you conquer you one day (makaelaherran.wordpress.com)
Clicking For The Cause: Does Online Activism Transfer To Real-Life Action?
People believe that social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, can help promote real political change. But do people actually do anything political outside of Facebook?
A team of researchers from Michigan State University led by Jessica Vitak set to find out, by looking at how young adults interacted with Facebook and in real life politics during the 2008 election.
According to background information in the new study, during the 2008 election, both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates utilized Facebook to maintain pages that allowed users to post comments, share news and videos, and connect with other users.
Furthermore, Facebook members had access to various site features that allowed them to share their political views and interact with others on the site, including both their “friends” on the site, as well as other users to whom they connected with through shared use of political groups and pages.
“But did these efforts make a difference to the political participation of Facebook users?” the researchers asked.
Recruiting students from the University of Michigan campus, a survey email was sent to a random sample of 4,000 students, with 683 usable responses. Participants took a number of surveys about their use of Facebook — including the Facebook Intensity quiz — as well as their political activities outside of Facebook.
Respondents tended to be female (68 percent) and white (86 percent), with a mean age of 20 years. Most participants reported having a Facebook account (96 percent) and being registered to vote (96 percent).
After analyzing the data, the researchers discovered that there is a complex relationship between young people’s use of Facebook and their political participation.
Researchers found that while young voters participate in political activity, the degree of this participation is somewhat superficial. The most common forms of general political participation tended to be informational and low in resource intensity (e.g., watching a debate), whereas political actions that required a greater commitment of resources (e.g., volunteering) were less frequent.
“This finding in isolation lends credibility to the concern that young citizens are becoming “slacktivists,” engaging in feel-good forms of political participation that have little or no impact on effecting change,” note the researchers.
“While there are a variety of ways to participate, our sample indicated they overwhelmingly engaged in the least intrusive, least time-consuming activities.”
But the researchers suggested an alternative interpretation of their data, too. “As we age, our political participation inevitably increases, in part due to the accumulation of civic skills. By this line of reasoning, any political activity — whether occurring on Facebook or in other venues — facilitates the development of civic skills, which in turn increases political participation.”
Click on Image to Read Reviews
“One advantage to the more lightweight political activity enabled via Facebook is the opportunity to “practice” civic skills with a minimal commitment of time and effort. Not only is Facebook accessible at any time of the day, but activities such as joining a political group or sharing a link can be accomplished with a few clicks of the mouse. These site characteristics create unique opportunities for participants to develop skills in their own time, representing a lower threshold for informal civic-engagement education.”
The study found that as the number of political activities people engage in on Facebook increases, so does political participation in other venues, and vice versa.
The researchers found a strong negative relationship between Facebook Intensity and general political participation.
The negative relationship between Facebook Intensity and general political participation is more difficult to explain. One interpretation of this relationship is that the most intense users of Facebook are classic “slacktivists,” — they do not translate their political activities on the site into other more commonly valued forms of political participation.
However, a number of alternative explanations are also possible. It may be that politically active users are only accessing Facebook to supplement their political participation in other venues.
Most importantly, this study has revealed that political activity on Facebook is significantly related to more general political participation.
“Facebook and other social networking services may offer young citizens an opportunity to experiment with their political opinions and beliefs while also being exposed to those of their peers, which could, in turn, stimulate their own interest and knowledge,” the researchers say.
“While Facebook may not be the cure-all to lagging political participation among young adults in the United States, this research provides support to the Internet-as-supplement argument that other researchers have made in regards to general communication.”
The study appears in the July 2010 issue of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.
Source: Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking
Reference:
Vitak, J., Zube, P., Smock, A., Carr, C.T., Ellison, N., Lampe, C. (2010). It’s Complicated: Facebook Users’ Political Participation in the 2008 Election. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.
Related articles
- Narcissism, Self-Esteem & Facebook (peterhbrown.wordpress.com)
- What Were You Thinking? The Causes Of Online Disinhibition (peterhbrown.wordpress.com)
“That’s One Small Step…”: Up To 92% Of Parents Plant Their Child’s First Digital Footprint Before They Are 2 Years Old
It seems like many of our children will no longer have to worry about those embarrassing photos popping up at 16,18th or 21st birthdays anymore. Many of them will have their lives broadcast as they grow via the internet, some before they are even born! The following article, based on research undertaken by internet security company AVG raises some interesting and concerning questions about how we publicly share our childrens’ lives, beginning before they are even old enough to speak, let alone protest…
Digital Birth: Welcome to the Online World
AVG Study Finds a Quarter of Children Have Online Births Before Their Actual Birth Dates
Source:AMSTERDAM–(BUSINESS WIRE)
Uploading prenatal sonogram photographs, tweeting pregnancy experiences, making online photo albums of children from birth, and even creating email addresses for babies – today’s parents are increasingly building digital footprints for their children prior to and from the moment they are born.
“Secondly, it reinforces the need for parents to be aware of the privacy settings they have set on their social network and other profiles. Otherwise, sharing a baby’s picture and specific information may not only be shared with friends and family but with the whole online world.”
Internet security company AVG surveyed mothers in North America (USA and Canada), the EU5 (UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain), Australia/New Zealand and Japan, and found that 81 percent of children under the age of two currently have some kind of digital profile or footprint, with images of them posted online. In the US, 92 percent of children have an online presence by the time they are two compared to 73 percent of children in the EU5.
According to the research, the average digital birth of children happens at around six months with a third (33%) of children’s photos and information posted online within weeks of being born. In the UK, 37 percent of newborns have an online life from birth, whereas in Australia and New Zealand the figure is 41 percent.
Almost a quarter (23%) of children begin their digital lives when parents upload their prenatal sonogram scans to the Internet. This figure is higher in the US, where 34 percent have posted sonograms online, while in Canada the figure is even higher at 37 percent. Fewer parents share sonograms of their children in France (13%), Italy (14%) and Germany (15%). Likewise only 14 percent of parents share these online in Japan.
Seven percent of babies and toddlers have an email address created for them by their parents, and five percent have a social network profile.
When asked what motivates parents to post images of their babies on the Internet, more than 70 percent of all mothers surveyed said it was to share with friends and family. However, more than a fifth (22%) of mothers in the US said they wanted to add more content to their social network profiles, while 18 percent of US mothers said they were simply following their peers.
Lastly, AVG asked mothers how concerned they are (on a scale of one to five with five being very concerned) about the amount of online information available on their children in future years. Mothers were moderately concerned (average 3.5), with Spanish mothers being the most concerned.
Click image to read reviews
According to AVG CEO JR Smith, “It’s shocking to think that a 30-year-old has an online footprint stretching back 10–15 years at most, while the vast majority of children today will have online presence by the time they are two-years-old – a presence that will continue to build throughout their whole lives.
“Our research shows that the trend is increasing for a child’s digital birth to coincide with and in many cases pre-date their real birth date. A quarter of babies have sonogram photos posted online before they have even physically entered into the world.
“It’s completely understandable why proud parents would want to upload and share images of very young children with friends and families. At the same time, we urge parents to think about two things:
“First, you are creating a digital history for a human being that will follow him or her for the rest of their life. What kind of footprint do you actually want to start for your child, and what will they think about the information you’ve uploaded in future?
“Secondly, it reinforces the need for parents to be aware of the privacy settings they have set on their social network and other profiles. Otherwise, sharing a baby’s picture and specific information may not only be shared with friends and family but with the whole online world.”
The research was conducted by Research Now among 2200 mothers with young (under two) children during the week of 27 September. Mothers in the EU5 (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain), Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Japan were polled.
Key results
1 – Mothers with children aged under two that have uploaded images of their child
Overall – 81%
USA – 92%
Canada – 84%
UK – 81%
France – 74%
Italy – 68%
Germany – 71%
Spain – 71%
(EU5 – 73%)
Australia – 84%
New Zealand – 91%
Japan – 43%
2 – Mothers that uploaded images of their newborn
Overall – 33%
USA – 33%
Canada – 37%
UK – 37%
France – 26%
Italy – 26%
Germany – 30%
Spain – 24%
(EU5 – 28.6%)
Australia – 41%
New Zealand – 41%
Japan – 19%
3 – Mothers that have uploaded antenatal scans online
Overall – 23%
USA – 34%
Canada – 37%
UK – 23%
France – 13%
Italy – 14%
Germany – 15%
Spain – 24%
(EU5 – 20%)
Australia – 26%
New Zealand – 30%
Japan – 14%
4 – Mothers that gave their baby an email address
Overall – 7%
USA – 6%
Canada – 9%
UK – 4%
France – 7%
Italy – 7%
Germany – 7%
Spain – 12%
(EU5 – 7%)
Australia – 7%
New Zealand – 4%
Japan – 7%
5 – Mothers that gave their baby a social network profile
Overall – 5%
USA – 6%
Canada – 8%
UK – 4%
France – 2%
Italy – 5%
Germany – 5%
Spain – 7%
(EU5 – 5%)
Australia – 5%
New Zealand – 6%
Japan – 8%
Related articles
- Good Parenting? Thousands of Babies Are on Facebook (bettyconfidential.com)
- Look Both Ways: Keeping Your Kids Safe On Facebook (peterhbrown.wordpress.com)
Helicopter Parenting? Why There Are No Medals In The Parenting Olympics
The following is re-posted from Psychcentral’s Dr John M Grohol, and poses some interesting questions about some trends towards over-parenting or “Helicopter Parenting” and it’s possible impacts on our kids. While there are many children who come from situations of parental neglect and laxity, there are also concerns regarding over protection. See what you think about what he has to say…
Let Your Children Be Children
Everyday, the same scene plays itself out across American neighborhoods across the United States. Mothers pull up in their Suburbans and Lexus SUVs at the entrance to their housing development. Even though the families live in perfectly safe, middle-class (or better) neighborhoods, parents feel the need to chauffeur their children the few blocks from the bus stop to home. Why?
This behavior may be understandable if the child is 5 or 6. But at 8 or 10, this behavior is ludicrous and symptomatic of a dangerous infection that has spread throughout this country in the latest generation of parents.
If not stopped, we may end up raising a whole generation or two of children who have little effective life coping skills and no connection or understanding to the world around them.
If you’re around 30 or older, think back to your own childhood. How much time was scheduled by your parents, and how much free time did you have on your own, to do with as you please? You may be surprised at the contrast between the scripted lives you as a parent plan for your children versus your own unscripted, imagination-driven childhood.
Here’s another scene from modern parenting. A child holds their 8th birthday party at a local birthday party place. All the parents not only arrive to drop off their child to attend the party, but also stay to supervise the child during the entire time they are at the party.
This isn’t just one or two worried parents — this appears to be very much the norm in many towns throughout middle-class America now. When it’s time to eat the cake, the birthday song is sung, the cake is cut, and then all the kids sit down at long rows of tables and begin eating. Their parents stand, like a prison lineup, along the outside walls of the room, keeping a close eye on their child.
At the first sign of a child’s conflict, parents are quick to intervene nowadays. “I just want everyone to play nicely,” they may explain. But they’re depriving their child of the opportunity to learn invaluable problem-solving skills. Especially if a child has no siblings, how else are they going to learn such skills except through trial-and-error interaction with their peers?
Click image to read reviews
There are many rationales for these kinds of parenting behaviors. But if we look at some of the most common ones, they all don’t stand up to tests of data, reasoning or logic.
One rationale is safety. “I’ll do anything to protect my child!” Okay, then why are you driving them home from the bus stop a few blocks away? Because statistics show that your child (age 15 years or younger) is 5 to 7 times more likely to die in your car than they are to be abducted by a stranger. And put into perspective, both are highly unlikely occurrences to begin with. With approximately 78 million children in the U.S., only 1,638 children died in car accidents in 2008, compared with only 200 who were abducted by a stranger.
Still another excuse for this behavior is a sense that there’s no reason not to help out our children or placate them with this thing or that. Why not buy them that toy while we’re out shopping for some new clothes? Why not pick them up at the entrance to our housing development?
Because it teaches our children that every outing is a chance for a reward. So much like a mouse in a cage pressing a button to receive a pellet of food, our children can inadvertently learn that any type of outing results in a toy and all of life is just another opportunity for a reward. When a reward isn’t granted, it’s an excuse to act out or punish those who grant the rewards.
Another rationale is wanting to provide our children with all the benefits we didn’t have. If our parents seemed uninterested or didn’t spend as much time with us as we may have wished, we’re going to ensure we’re there every minute for our children.
But somehow this has become twisted to trying to smooth over every life bump our child experiences, so that they experience virtually none at all. By the time they go off to college, they have had only this womb-like protected life that little prepares them for the realities of life — people who treat us badly, failure at something we want to be good at, rejection by others, and honest hardship.
Understandably, there may be times where a parent has good reason to need to pick up their child at their bus-stop, or attend a birthday party with them. But these should be exceptions, not the rule.
Click image to read reviews
If you see yourself in this entry, it’s not too late. I highly recommend one of the following books, either Richard Weissbourd’s The Parents We Mean To Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children’s Moral and Emotional Development or Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy. These books talk about the importance of letting children be children, exploring their imagination on their own, on their own unscripted and unscheduled time. The research we have on child development suggests this results not only in happier children, but children who grow up to be more well-adjusted adults.
There is no “right way” to parent (contrary to what the hundreds of parenting books suggest). The right way is to find the way that works for you and your partner, while respecting the needs of your child. Those needs include the need to be connected with nature, to be connected and learn how to interact with other children who aren’t their siblings, with no adults around.
What if your child doesn’t want to play outside or walk from the bus stop? Well, they often don’t want to learn arithmetic or do their chores, and yet we still find a way to have them understand the value of each. And if you’re feeling pressure from other moms, well, now’s the time to take a stand for what you believe in and what the research shows. Your child will thank you in the end.
Children — like adults — learn by doing, as much as they learn through formal teaching. If we take those informal learning opportunities away from our children, we ultimately hurt them while ironically trying to help them. We hurt their ability to learn the way they were intrinsically built to learn — through natural experiences, through interactive experiences with their peers, and through unscripted, unstructured play time.
If you want to help your child today, give them time to be a child.
Related articles
- Look Both Ways: Keeping Your Kids Safe On Facebook (peterhbrown.wordpress.com)
- Why do so many parents put their kids’ lives online? Study reveals disturbing statistics (techvibes.com)
Look Both Ways: Keeping Your Kids Safe On Facebook
With a bit of strategic parental guidance, you can educate your kids about the potential hazards of social media and give them the tools they need to protect themselves from online predators, guard their personal information, preserve their online reputation, and avoid suspicious downloads that could harm your PC.
Source: http://www.pcworld.com
Facebook and Kids
An iStrategyLabs study documents the growth rates of Facebook profiles in the United States based on age, gender, location, education level, and interests. The study shows that from January 2009 to January 2010, the 13-to-17-year-old age group grew about 88 percent in the U.S., jumping from about 5.7 million teenage Facebook users to almost 10.7 million. Those figures, of course, don’t include minors who lied about their age upon creating their profile.
Despite a legal requirement that kids must be 13 or older to sign up for Facebook, many younger children are using the service. Because no perfect age-verification system exists, younger kids are able to slip by unnoticed through falsifying their age. (For instance, I have one friend whose 12-year-old daughter listed her birth year as 1991 on Facebook, thereby claiming that she was 19 years old.)
The safety and public-policy teams at Facebook are aware of their young audience, and the site has rolled out privacy settings specifically for the under-18 set. Users between the ages of 13 and 17 get what Facebook’s privacy policy calls a “slightly different experience.” Minors do not have public search listings created for them when they sign up for Facebook, meaning their accounts cannot be found on general search engines outside of Facebook.
The “Everyone” setting is not quite as open for minors as it is for adults. If a minor’s privacy settings are set to “Everyone,” that includes only friends, friends of friends, and people within the child’s verified school or work network. However, the “Everyone” setting still allows adults to search for minors by name and send them friend requests (and vice versa), unless the account owner manually changes that. Also, only people within a minor’s “Friends of Friends” network can message them.
Facebook recently premiered a new location-based service called Places, which has some restrictions for minors as well. Minors can share their location through Places only with people on their Friends lists, even if their privacy settings are set to “Everyone.”
As for the teens who lie about how old they are, Facebook does have a way of verifying age. If, for instance, a 19-year-old is mostly friends with 13- and 14-year-olds, and they seem to be taking lots of photos together, then Facebook might suspect that the user is actually 12 or 13–and then it may flag the user’s page for removal or give the user a warning.
The Basics: Protecting Personal Information
Even with Facebook’s privacy policy for minors, a child’s personal information is still widely on display. A young person’s Facebook account is just the beginning of their online footprint, and they need to take that fact seriously, since it can affect their reputation today and potentially come into play later in life when they’re applying for college and for jobs.
Facebook public-policy representative Nicky Jackson Colaco advises parents to sit down with their kids and talk about the importance of protecting one’s online identity. Maintaining open communication with your children is the key to understanding exactly how they’re using Facebook.
“I’d never send my son onto the football field without pads and knowledge of the game,” Colaco says, “and it’s exactly the same with Facebook.”
If you have a Facebook profile, consider sending your child a friend request–not necessarily as a spying tool, but to remind your child of your own online presence. If you don’t have a Facebook account, ask your child to show you their profile. It helps to familiarize yourself as much as possible with the site’s privacy controls and other settings, because the more you know about Facebook, the better equipped you can be if something serious ever arises.
It’s also a good idea to take a look at your child’s photos and wall posts to make sure they are age appropriate. Remind your child that the Internet in general, but especially Facebook, is not a kids-only zone, and that adults can see what’s on their profile as well. Maintaining an appropriate online presence as a teenager will help your child build a respectable online footprint. Remember: The Internet never forgets.
If your kid really has something to hide, they might make a Facebook profile behind your back, or have one account that’s parent-friendly and a separate account for their friends. If they show you a profile that seems skimpy on content, that could be a red flag. That’s where PC and Web-monitoring tools could come into play (see the “Monitoring Behavior” section on the next page).
Finally, go over Facebook’s privacy settings with your child, and show them how to activate the highest level of security. Emphasize that Facebook is a place for friends and not strangers, and then change their profile to “friends only.” Again, remind your child to be wary of what they post in their status updates, since oversharing online can lead to consequences in the real world.
“As the site gets bigger, it’s important to have everyone working together–us, parents, kids, our safety advisory board–to make sure the site remains a safe place,” Colaco says.
Cyberbullying
The suicides of 13-year-old Megan Meier and 15-year-old Phoebe Prince have brought media attention to the potentially devastating effects of cyberbullying. A study performed as part of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a division of the Pew Research center, reports that “32 percent of online teens have experienced some sort of harassment via the Internet,” including private material being forwarded without permission, threatening messages, and embarrassing photos posted without their consent.
Click image to read reviews
The best way to deal with a cyberbully is to report them and block them from your kid’s Facebook profile.
Research performed at the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center shows that, while adults are inclined to moderate their online behavior, children and teens are “significantly more willing to ‘go further’ and to type very shocking things that they would never say in person… Kids believe that online statements simply ‘don’t count’ because they’re not being said to someone’s face.”
Because young people tend to believe that they aren’t accountable for their online actions, Facebook becomes a convenient place to target victims for bullying. Although you can’t do much to prevent your child from being bullied online, you can help them end the harassment if it starts.
The MARC Center has several guides offering tips on how to handle cyberbullying, and all of them start with communicating directly with your child–don’t be afraid to get involved. If you think your child is being bullied, advise your child to spend less time on the site in question, or flag the bully by notifying the Website. If the behavior is also happening at school, notify the school’s administrators so that they, too, can get involved.
Facebook also makes it easy to report harassment issues, and encourages users to do so. But what if you find out that your child is the one doing the bullying? Both scenarios are possible, and both should be dealt with.
In a New York Times Q&A session on cyberbullying, expert Elizabeth K. Englander of the MARC Center addresses an approach that parents should take if they discover that their child is the bully. She first recommends that you discuss with your child why cyberbullying is hurtful, and bring up some of the tragic cases of teen suicide related to online harassment. Try to understand that your child could be reacting to pressure from friends, or that your child may be retaliating against someone who hurt their feelings in a similar manner. Although such circumstances don’t excuse the behavior, learning about them could bring a larger issue to your attention.
Finally, establish a set of rules for your teen to follow when using Facebook and other social networking sites, and monitor your child’s usage, perhaps even placing a daily time limit.
Stranger Danger
Earlier this year, 33-year-old Peter Chapman was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping, raping, and murdering a 17-year-old girl he met through Facebook. Chapman, a registered sex offender, had created a fake profile and pretended to be 17 years old to gain the victim’s trust.
Despite Facebook’s valiant efforts to rid its site of online predators, the system isn’t foolproof. The site has banned convicted sex offenders from joining, and in 2008 all of the known sex offenders already on the site were removed. However, considering the case of Peter Chapman, predators are still finding ways to cheat the system.
As mentioned earlier, you can limit privacy settings so that your child is directly interacting only with people they know–and more important, you can hide information such as your child’s age, school, and full name from people who are not direct friends.
Stress to your child the importance of avoiding people they do not know in real life. Even if the stranger’s profile says that they are the same age as your child and that they go to a nearby school, the profile could be a decoy. Your child can report to Facebook any stranger who tries to contact them or engage in inappropriate activity.
Third-Party Applications
Many third-party applications on Facebook are aimed directly at teens–often they involve games, establishing crushes, or sprucing up profiles. But many kids don’t quite grasp that these Facebook components are not actually created by Facebook, and that therefore they have different terms of service.
Even worse, some of these external downloads could contain malware. Sunbelt Software has reported several suspicious Facebook scams, from a Texas Hold’em poker app containing adware to various phishing scams under similar disguises.
Make sure you have an up-to-date antivirus program and ad-blocking software that could catch these threats. Talk to your kids about skimming through the terms of service and privacy policies for applications before they accept the download. Also advise them never to open a link posted on their wall from someone they don’t know–it could point to a malicious site.
Monitoring Behavior
If you want to keep a more watchful eye on your kids’ online behavior, you can use any of several effective tools.
SafetyWeb is an online service geared toward parents who wish to keep tabs on what their kids are doing online. It checks across 45 different social networking sites to see if your child has a registered public profile, and it monitors those accounts for any potentially threatening activities. Monitored platforms include Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube. It also recognizes LiveJournal as a social network and will monitor that site, but it has yet to include other blogging platforms such as Tumblr.
The service will notify you, the parent, if your child has posted anything potentially unsafe or inappropriate, within categories related to drugs and alcohol, sex, depression, profanity, and cyberbullying. That way, you can check your child’s public activity without having to join every site or read every post they make.
McGruff Safeguard software takes online monitoring a step further: It can record every move your child makes on the Internet, covering everything from instant-message logs to search terms on Google. Parents can keep a close eye on their children and discuss any behavior found to be dangerous or inappropriate.
Whether you use a software monitoring tool or not, experts agree that having regular conversations with your children about their online usage is the most important element to keeping them safe and aware of the dangers of the Web.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Sugar & Spite: Bullying and Young Girls (peterhbrown.wordpress.com)
- Six Facebook, Twitter mistakes that can get you fired (macworld.com)
Sugar & Spite: Bullying and Young Girls
Source: TIME.com
Sugar and spice and everything nice. That’s what little girls are made of, right? Well, not exactly, it seems. Bullying and nasty cliques start as early as elementary school, says Michelle Anthony, a developmental psychologist and the co-author of Little Girls Can Be Mean: Four Steps to Bully-Proof Girls in the Early Grades (St. Martin’s Griffin). Anthony and her co-author, Reyna Lindert, have developed a helpful technique for parents to employ. In brief, they advise observing the social situation, connecting with the child and guiding the child to the point that she is supported in her actions. TIME senior reporter Andrea Sachs spoke with Anthony about their research and conclusions.
How did you get interested in this topic?
Our interest in this topic began personally as the mothers of young girls. My eldest daughter, when she was 6, was enmeshed in a two-year-long struggle with a friend. For the first year, I didn’t even know about it, because she felt so alone and isolated that she didn’t talk about it with anyone. She tried to get help from her teacher, who sort of told her to thicken her skin over it. She took that to heart as being her problem and really was silent for a while. Then it became apparent as it began influencing her life more and more. Dr. Lindert’s daughter in fifth grade was ousted from her friendship circle in the middle of the year and basically had to start over socially. So our interests really began as mothers, and then knowing our background and our expertise, we began working with families and parents and girls.
Is there a common misperception that this only happens when kids get older?
Exactly, that this is a problem that only comes to light in middle school and high school. The reality is that the roots are all in elementary school. Girls as young as kindergarten are facing significant social challenges without the resources, without the tools and most important, without the support to best manage them.
Is this type of bullying behavior common?
Oh, I think it’s extremely common. I don’t think there’s a single school in this country where a good portion of girls aren’t dealing with friendship struggles and various degrees of social cruelty. I think what’s more uncommon is to have a language to talk about it. So many girls are facing these struggles alone. Either their parents say, “She’ll be nicer tomorrow,” or “Just find another friend,” or “Don’t play with someone who’s mean.” We’re doing it from the best place, we’re doing it to be helpful. But the problem is, for the girls themselves, it’s isolating them further, because it’s basically saying to them, “This is your problem to figure out by yourself.”
Click image to read reviews
Among young kids, is bullying more common among girls or boys?
I think what we’re talking about here — in terms of social cruelty and relational aggression — is more common among girls. Which is not to say that it doesn’t happen with boys. But if you had to stereotype, girls more often use social power to have influence over their peers, and boys more often use physical intimidation to have power over their peers. Some people would argue that the physical blow from a boy bully might be more acute, might be more dramatic, might be more dangerous. But what research has shown is that girls’ relational aggression tends to involve more people, and it tends to last longer, and in that way is just as devastating for the girls who experience it.
Do most daughters tell their parents that something is going on?
Sometimes. When it gets bad enough, they usually do. And if they don’t, parents — especially parents who are taught to recognize shifts in their children — will begin to notice changes. More often than girls coming and saying, “I have this big problem,” you’ll see shifts in behavior. They’ll stop liking things they used to like, or they’ll start complaining about headaches or stomachaches more, or that they don’t like [a particular] class, because that’s where these things are happening. When girls come home, there are sort of codes that they use: “She was mean” — that’s a very common phrase for a child to use — or, “My friend and I got in a fight.”
Is it ever necessary to enlist the school’s help?
Absolutely. In every case? Absolutely not. But I’m a very big advocate of parents not staying alone. Teachers, guidance counselors, principals, social workers — there are a slew of people in these school districts whose purpose is to help kids learn. And when kids are stuck in social strife, they can’t learn. To face it alone doesn’t make any sense. For parents, to reach out to get more knowledge and more support is so beneficial to their child. This isn’t about tattling on some other child and saying, “This kid is mean.” It’s really about understanding the situation that your child is in.
Should you ever move your daughter out of the school?
That can happen if things are bad enough. But I think before that, there are a lot of steps. For instance, put the kids in separate classes.
Has the Internet made this worse?
Yes. That’s one of the big things about the difference from when our generation was growing up. Meanness happened then too, but the sphere of influence was much smaller. The public and permanent nature of the acts today — because of social-networking sites, technology and the Internet — make it very real for these kids since everyone is involved. Whatever happens will last literally forever.
Do things get any better when the girls get older?
This behavior peaks around middle school and the very beginning of high school. It tends to decrease over high school, because the girls’ friendships become more stabilized and they really learn how to interact and to support one another, and to have the kind of friendships that we think of as adult friendships.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Why Do Some Friends Disappear When The Going Gets Tough? (peterhbrown.wordpress.com)
- Mean Girls (lifescript.com)
Narcissism, Self-Esteem & Facebook
Following on from yesterday’s post on disinhibition and social networking, I came across this post from Dr Shock MD’s blog commenting on THIS RESEARCH PAPER (pdf) Credit to Dr Shock (excerpted). Interesting?
In normal every day life with face to face contact the physical characteristics and knowledge about social background form the identity of your contact. It’s stable and three dimensional. You know that person, it’s therefor very difficult for the other to claim another identity or create impressions inconsistent with how you know him or her. Online identity is a different topic. You can create ideal identities not necessarily overlapping your real identity. It’s a controlled setting in which you can create different identities from the person you really are. Moreover, from research it has been shown that people act differently in social networking environments when compared to those interacting in anonymous settings. Online self representation can vary according to the nature of the setting.
What is the relationship between offline personality and online self representation on facebook?
A recent study looked at the effects of narcissism and self esteem on online social activity and self promotion. The researchers included 50 male and 50 female facebook owners, they were randomly recruited at York university, their age ranged from 18 to 25 years. The facebook pages were rated and the participants took 4 questionnaires about demographic information, facebook activity, self esteem (the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale) and narcissism (the Narcissism Personality Inventory).
Five features of the Facebook page were coded for the extent to which they were self-promoting: (a) the About Me section, (b) the Main Photo, (c) the first 20 pictures on the View Photos of Me section, (d) the Notes section, and (e) the Status Updates section.
Click image to read reviews
Self promotion was distinguished as any descriptive or visual information that appeared to attempt to persuade others about one’s own positive qualities. For instance posting ‘‘My Celebrity Look-alikes”. Use of picture enhancement etc.
They found a strong relationship between narcissism and lower self esteem with greater facebook activity as well as more promotional self content. Gender did not influence these relationships.
This is another study implying that narcissism can be detected in facebook, the previous study is also discussed on this blog: The Dangers of Facebook. Gender differences were found in another study but on risk taking attitudes. Men with profiles on social networking sites are higher in risk taking behavior and less worried about privacy issues compared to women.
In research looking at other personality factors, the Big Five was used amongst facebook users. As discussed in a previous post on this blog: personality factors are not as influential as expected on using Facebook. The Big Five is probably not a very good instrument to investigate personality traits and facebook use.
Mehdizadeh, S. (2010). Self-Presentation 2.0: Narcissism and Self-Esteem on Facebook Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 13 (4), 357–364
Related articles by Zemanta
- What Were You Thinking? The Causes Of Online Disinhibition (peterhbrown.wordpress.com)
- Twitter: 10 Psychological Insights (spring.org.uk)
What Were You Thinking? The Causes Of Online Disinhibition
The online disinhibition effect has cost people their jobs, their income and their relationships, yet many are still oblivious to it.
Credit: Re-posted from PsyBlog
The first famous case of someone allegedly losing their job from indiscreet remarks made online was in 2002. Heather Armstrong, author of the blog ‘dooce’, claimed she was fired after her colleagues discovered she’d been lampooning them online.
In internet terms getting fired for a blog rant is ancient news; to make the headlines now your indiscretions have to be on Twitter or Facebook. One recent example was this girl who was ‘Facebook fired’ after she said exactly what she thought of her boss on Facebook after a bad day at work.
What she’d forgotten was they were Facebook friends, so the update would appear front and centre the next time he logged into Facebook. She might as well have said it straight to his face and, for good measure, kicked him in the shins.
These are two examples of what psychologists call the ‘online disinhibition effect’, the idea that when online people feel less inhibited by social conventions. Compared with face-to-face interactions, online we feel freer to do and say what we want and, as a result, often do and say things we shouldn’t.
Internet psychologist John Suler has written about six characteristics of the internet which lead to radical changes in our online behaviour (Suler, 2004):
1. Anonymity
Online people feel they can’t be identified in the same way they can when they’re in public. It’s similar to going out in a costume at night with a mask on to cover the face (see research on deindividuation). That sense of disconnection from our normal personality allows new ways of behaving. People may even consider their online behaviours to arise from an online alter ego.
Ironically, though, some people are far less anonymous online than offline. Because of the online disinhibition effect some share too much on their social networking profiles, sometimes even things they wouldn’t admit to their closest friends. It’s easy to forget that you don’t need espionage training to type someone’s name into Google.
2. Invisibility
Because others can’t see us online, we don’t have to worry about how we look to others and what emotional signals we are sending through facial expressions.
Imagine, for example, that you’re telling a friend about a distressing experience face-to-face. You may feel the urge to try and hide the depth of your emotion from them, which stops you telling the story. Online, however, you can continue to tell the story without giving away how bad it really is.
It can allow us to open up about things that we can’t discuss face-to-face. Online support groups rely on this openness to allow members to discuss their deepest hopes and fears. This is one of the potentially positive aspects of the online disinhibition effect, as long as users protect their privacy and identity.
Click image to read reviews
3. Stop/start communication
Face-to-face we see people’s reactions to what we’ve said or done immediately. That tends to put us off upsetting them or risking their judgement.
Online there are no such restrictions: because of online asynchronicity it’s possible to say something and wait 24 hours before reading the response, or never read it at all.
This cuts both ways. So-called ‘internet trolls’ are people who post to discussion forums or other online groups with the express purpose of stirring up controversy (known online as flame wars). They are experts in a kind of emotional hit-and-run. On the other hand, people who have difficulty when communicating face-to-face can become eloquent and courteous when online.
The majority of us probably fall somewhere in between these two extreme positions. Nevertheless the lack of instant feedback from other people’s body language causes all sorts of communication failures online. One of the most common causes of these failures is jokes. Without the accompanying body language, friendly jibes are easily misunderstood and interactions can quickly take a turn for the worse.
4. Voices in your head
The very act of reading online can create a surprisingly intimate connection. Because other people’s words are in our heads, we may merge them with our own internal monologues.
While humans have been reading novels and letters for centuries, these are relatively formal modes of communication, and it’s only in the last decade that online communication has brought the intimacy of a letter to informal, everyday conversation.
5. An imaginary world
The anonymity, invisibility and fantasy elements of online activities encourage us to think that the usual rules don’t apply. Like a science fiction escape fantasy, the net allows us to be who we want and do what we want, both good and bad.
The problem is that when life becomes a game that can be left behind at the flick of a switch, it’s easy to throw responsibility out of the window.
6. No police
We all fear disapproval and punishment, but this imaginary world appears to have no police and no authority figures. Although there are people with authority online, it’s difficult to tell who they are. There is no internet government, no one person in charge of it all. So people feel freer online: away from authority, social convention and conformity.
Of course the idea that authority doesn’t exist online is fantasy because the policeman exists inside all of us, to a greater or lesser extent.
Wing it
These factors work together to create a world in which we can feel freer. But this freedom is an illusion maintained by the online experience of invisibility, anonymity and lack of immediate, visceral, emotional feedback from others, or at least our ability to turn that feedback off.
Perhaps this is freedom: some people do report feeling closer to their real selves when online. But there’s a reason we developed all those social inhibitions in the old-fashioned, offline world. They stop us offending other people, which helps us keep our jobs and maintain our relationships. That’s not to say that the internet can’t help us build relationships with others or find jobs, it clearly can. It’s just that we tend to be less aware of both how much our behaviour can change online and the potential drawbacks to these changes.
Every now and then we need reminding that the internet is still a relatively fresh invention and, socially, we are still coming to terms with it. Long-established niceties of face-to-face behaviour haven’t yet taken hold online and, in the absence of precedent, we have to wing it.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Faking It: The Psychological Cost (spring.org.uk)
- Why Do Some Friends Disappear When The Going Gets Tough? (peterhbrown.wordpress.com)
- How To Effectively Manage Your Online Reputation (dumblittleman.com)
About Peter
Peter Brown BHMS (Hons) MPsychClin MAPS
I’m a Clinical Psychologist and have a private practice and consultancy in Brisbane Australia. I have 24 years experience in child, adult and family clinical psychology. I have a wonderful wife and three kids.
I am co-founder of Christian Wholeness Counselling Services.
I like researching issues of the brain & mind, reading and seeking out new books and resources for myself and my clients. I thought that others might be interested in some of what I have found also, hence this blog…
Subscribe to My Blog Posts & Updates
-
Blog Surfer
Alphainventions
Recent Comments
Peter H Brown Clinical Psychologist 