Few people consider that what is presented in a Facebook profile may not be true. Profiles allow us to formulate opinions on and impressions of the people in whom we are interested. If the information we are presented with is false or incomplete, however, our impression will be as well.
The Facebook profile was divided into fifteen different categories, and Ivy (the student whose Facebook profile was used) was asked to assign each category a number, ranging from one through five, one meaning that the information provided is 0% true, and five meaning that the information is 100% true.
The fifteen categories, and their scores, were networks 4, sex 5, relationship status 5, hometown 5, political views 3, contact info 3, activities 4, interests 2, music 4, television 2, movies 3, books 3, about me 3, education 3, and groups 5. The average score that Ivy assigned to each of the fifteen categories was a 3.6.
Based on what is known about Ivy, her self evaluation is very accurate. There are a number of categories that received either a four or five for accuracy, and some of these categories could be classified as assessment signals. On Facebook in order to join a school network, you must have an e-mail address from that school, which makes networks an assessment signal. It could be argued that on Facebook, even sex is an assessment signal. Sex is something that would be very difficult to lie about on Facebook since such a large amount of information, including pictures, is given to viewers. Many of the people that would be looking at ones profile are also real world friends, who would know whether or not one is female or male. The rest of the categories are conventional signals that could be easily lied about. For example, one could say that they like a particular band under the music category, and even people that know them would have no way of knowing whether or not they actually like that band. These categories, ones where the lies were of smaller magnitudes, were the ones in which lies were most frequent.
If looked at form the feature based approach, one would notice that Facebook contains two features, one always true and one often true, that make it conducive to lying. The feature that is definitely an aspect of Facebook is that it is distributed, and the feature that is mostly true for Facebook is that it is often recordless. For example, if one deletes information from ones profile, it is very difficult to prove that that information was definitely there. Based on these features, one would expect the number of lies told on Facebook to fall somewhere between lies told via texting and lies told face to face.
It is estimated that people lie in about 31% of their everyday social interactions, which encompasses all media. On Facebook alone the frequency of lies, based on the results of the study of Ivy, is close to 30%. A reason, perhaps, as to why lying is so prevalent on Facebook is because it is so very highly distributed. Facebook profile makers are very detached, for the most part, from those viewing their profiles, and thus will be less inhibited when writing their profile. They will add things that will make them seem cooler, because those that will be viewing their profile, for the most part, have very little contact with them and thus have little chance to prove whether the statements made were true or not. Most lies on Facebook are minor, making them even more difficult to detect unless one has very close contact with the creator of the Facebook profile.
4 comments:
I disagree with what you said in your last paragraph about the fact facebook users are very detached. I would argue the opposite because most people spend a lot of time viewing their profile and pictures for impression management. Based on the selective self-presention theory from the Hyperpersonal Model, I would argue that people invest a lot of time and energy to write their profiles, especially the conventional signals to make sure they appear a certain way. I know that from personal experience friends spend time going through their photos to make sure only a certain pre-determined impression can be formed. Specifically I know one friend who actively untags pictures of herself so that prospective employers who may browse facebook can only have a positive impression of her.
I never said that Facebook users were detached from their profile. I merely stated that they were detached from many of the users who are viewing their profile. Let's say that someone has 100 friends on Facebook, and that same person only sees about ten of those friends regularly. That means that they will only have contact with 10% of those that may potentially be viewing their profile, which doesn't even take into account the people viewing their profile with whom they are not friends. For most people, however, the percentage of people will be far less than the 10% suggested in this example. This thought, that facebook users have little contact with those viewing their profiles, is why I presented the idea that perhaps the reason people are less inhibited to lie on Facebook is because there is a lesser chance of them being exposed. They can use selective self-presentation to present signals the way they want to, which may involve lying, with little chance of being "found out" because they only come into contact with a relatively small percentage of those viewing their profile. Thanks for your comment!
Hi, Tim
First of all, I have to say that I am impressed by your data, that seems really convincing. But I am just curious about one of your statements: people who go though other's profiles are rarely close in real life...cause most of my friends met each other FtF before they add each other on Facebook.
You mentioned that even they met before but few of them would keep in touch with each other. I agree with this view, but think about it: how many of us will keep an eye on those "friends" we seldom meet in life?
Thanks for the comment yu tian. Meeting someone is quite different than knowing someone. Seeing someone once a month, is not really frequent enough to know all about them, such as who is their favorite band, which is something that they may potentially lie about on Facebook. This means that the detection of lies in the real world would be poor. I agree with you, however, that many people that are friends on Facebook are close friends in the real world, and these are the people by whom Facebook lies would be exposed. I don't necessarily agree with your belief, however, that people will rarely check on those that are not often met in life. I find that the people whose profiles I check the least are those that I am closest to. There could be a number of reasons for this, amongst them are that I've already checked their profiles a multitude of times, or that I know them well enough that checking their profile on Facebook seems to be a waste of time. Friends that I have less contact with, however, have the profiles that appeal to me most. Since I don't know them, Facebook provides a means by which to learn about them, whether or not what we are learning is true, however, is not known. Their profiles are interesting and offer insight into the life of someone whom we only somewhat know. Perhaps we look at their profiles to confirm whether or not our first impressions are true. Then again, a lot of the above statements are based on the experience of myself and my friends, so it's not really representative of the Facebook population as a whole. Thanks for your comments!
Post a Comment