Depersonalization and (in)communication in social networks

How has the emergence of social networks changed the way we communicate?

Technology has made a big dent in our day-to-day life through social networks, social appsthe ubiquitous tablets... But how can they influence our communication processes? But how can they influence our communication processes?

We are increasingly connected, although the physical barriers that exist between people when communicating online, make them a useful tool to facilitate our routines, but being a complement without replacing direct human contact. The world of applications and social networks allows us to recreate more or less faithfully a direct communicative process between sender and receiver, pBut it is not the same to be in front of the webcam and to be able to appreciate the non-verbal nonverbal language, than interpreting a text message..

The sender-receiver scheme in social networks

Human communication is not a simple thing. There is never a situation where information travels cleanly from one person to another: there are always gaps for misunderstandings, hidden meanings behind words and double meanings to emerge.. 

This is because the sender-channel-receiver sender-channel-receiver scheme is affected by physical barriers, our ways of interpreting sentences and words and even our emotional state, which in some cases can lead, for example, to overtones in a conversation. In communication there is always a margin for unexpected dynamics to appear: sentences that turn out to be unfortunate, confusion with double meanings, etc.

Communication problems increase when interacting over the Internet.

The fact of not being face to face makes these potentially problematic unforeseen events arise more frequently. However, the use of social networks and the electronic devices used to communicate do not influence the way we communicate just by withholding contextual or gestural information.

For example, the sense of security that surrounds the comfort area from which we can comment can create the phenomenon of depersonalization when attacking other participants without measure. Being separated from each other causes the members of a conversation to behave differently.. In order to be able to analyze the discourse and to be able to interpret the emphasis, movements, looks and symbols that are relevant to the sender, it is necessary to be able to access a certain personal proximity, as well as to be able to enhance the capacity for empathy and assertiveness.

A clear example can be the comments that are made in Facebook posts regarding some topic or opinions. This is an incomplete communicative process, in which any person can stop answering at any time, can answer without having read the messages that have been said before and can misunderstand the addressee of the sentences, among other things. That is why sometimes we fall into over-justification of what is said, creating very extensive contributions that slow down the conversation..

Creating perfect avatars

Distance creates the opportunity to offer the public an ideal image of the self through profile pictures, publications and others, but cognitive dissonances may appear between the "real self" and the "ideal self" that are somehow temporarily solved by the social masks that the user may create, in addition to the development or expression of the ego itself.

We can find examples in group publications that could well be social experiments, and if they are not, they are a great source of information about the communicative processes in social networks and how sympathies are configured to create new networks.

Groups of people in a city, pages with viral contents, etc. They contain information about conversations and how "I's" interact to show a desired public profile in discussions. As banal examples of conflicts that can illustrate this, we find the replies to comments about spelling, or how to reinforce arguments using Internet search engines by copying and pasting concepts and quotations created by third parties..

All this is facilitated by the comfort of home and the ease of access to information on the network, in addition to the security generated by the fact of not having in front of you the person you are talking to.

New forms of harassment

Cases of cyberbullying could also be studied in more depth. cyberbullyingwhich personally remind me of Milgram's famous experiment on submission to authority (but in this case without a socially accepted authority figure). The processes of diffusion of responsibility are facilitated when people are not physically present, as comments can easily be deleted, Many people therefore choose to take screenshots in order to have evidence of abuse cases..

These processes have been going on for a long time, but the communication channel and the context have changed making it more complex. In social media communication there are multiple factors that determine a person's behavior.

For this reason and much more, it is not superfluous to encourage us to reflect on how we can use social networks to improve our power of communication among people, beyond using them as a means of entertainment or to seek social acceptance through the image we want to show to the public.We can do more than just use them as a means of entertainment or to seek social acceptance through the image we want to show to the public.