Unmasked and dangerous

For a long time, I believed that every stranger I met online had something to hide. Perhaps it was because we used pseudonyms. Or perhaps it was because when I was first online, I was a mischievous child pretending to be a mysterious and beautiful blonde living in Alaska.

Whichever the case, it seems social networking has led a shift away from the use of avatars and fake names into an age where our online selves are merely an extension of who we are in real life.

Social networks allow us to distance ourselves from our actions.

Tallulah Habib, social media activist, ITWeb

Even World of Warcraft guilds now have Facebook groups where you get to see everyone's faces, and group VOIP conversations where you get to have real conversations with the people who you play alongside.

Of course, the theory is that “who we are” is dolled up for our audience. In the Cambridge Social Sciences book: “Building Virtual Communities”, Dorian Wiszniewski and Richard Coyne speak about “masks of identity” and how we actively construct an identity to hide behind in any social interaction. They say this effect is much more pronounced online, where we have more control over what people see.

Various other academics have written about the subject of self-constructed identities, and how, in order to belong to an online community, we present 'best versions' of ourselves rather than the whole truth. They write about how we yearn for celebrity and obtain it online by 'glamorising' reality. As the great someecard goes: “May your life one day be as awesome as you pretend it is on Facebook.”

However, while we may stretch, polish and in some cases corset the truth, studies have found that people, by and large, are their real selves online; or at least on Facebook.

A paper published in “Psychological Science” in 2010 revealed that, when tested on their actual personalities versus ideal personalities, a group of German students' Facebook profiles were more true to the former.

The Department of Psychology at the University of Texas managed to duplicate those results earlier this year, and in addition, found that extroverts engaged more than introverts, and that people who didn't know the participants in real life were able to glean a large amount about who they really were from what was available on their Facebook profiles. These results indicate that not only are people truthful in the identities they portray on Facebook, but they also act in ways that give an accurate idea of who they are.

Perhaps the worry should not be whether people are themselves on Facebook, but rather, if they are too much themselves. In addition to being a stage on which our lives can play out (and we can feel like celebrities), Facebook, and in fact all social networks, allow us to distance ourselves from our actions.

The so-called “disinhibition” effect allows people to say and do things online they'd never have the courage to do in real life. It's kind of amazing, if you think about it. People feel safer saying and doing things online, where their every word is documented, recorded and indexed by Google, than in real life, when the words only exist in the memories of those who heard them first-hand.

Closet racists can un-closet themselves, perverts can feel free to pervert, sexism can run riot. All that's required is that they surround themselves with like-minded people. Social networks, by their very nature, allow us to choose who we connect with. It's not difficult at all to ensure that we only come into contact with those who share our views.

Someone posts a status you don't like? Un-friend them. Someone leaves a comment on your page you disagree with? Ban them. If you've ever had the unfortunate experience of stumbling into a bigoted Facebook group, you'll be familiar with that awful, powerless feeling that comes when you try to speak out against what's happening and get shot down and then gagged.

Such groups create safe environments for all the worst that humanity has to offer, and allow people to show their true colours in a way that isn't at all pleasant. Members of such online communities become subject to the psychological phenomenon of 'group think', where in order to preserve the harmony of the group, they're unlikely to ever raise their voices in protest.

Initially, the theory of disinhibition relied on anonymity, but increasingly we're seeing that's not the case. Even on Web sites where Facebook Connect is active (so people's comments link through to their Facebook profiles) this doesn't seem to dissuade people from saying what's on their minds.

If online really is an extension of who people are in real life, perhaps people really should be less genuine in cyber space.