Extra Credit blog: What the future holds

Every year the internet is becoming more advanced and changes are occurring everyday. Just three years ago before I entered college personal blogs like Xanga were just becoming popular. Today, it is a common system used for homework assignment in classes! The world is becoming smaller all the time because of advances with webcams and programs like Skype. My younger sister and her friends are using their built in Mac webcams to video chat over the internet and post information about themselves on their social networking sights. When I was her age I didn’t even know such websites as Facebook existed nor did I ever foresee their creation. The most unique way to show your personality was through the color of your font and the quotes you put in your AIM profile.
Some issues that I think will have to be addressed are the use of these social networking sites being used by such young children. Once the internet became popular, issues arose with pedophilia and kidnapping when older people would fake their identity online and harm a child once they decided to meet in person. While many children are warned to be careful of speaking with strangers online today, I think that the use of social networking sites will exacerbate the problem. Teens often like to rebel and break the rules, and if they are told not to talk to strangers, they may be inclined to after all. Especially when sites such as Facebook or Myspace provide “proof” that the stranger isn’t lying. If a fourteen year old girl sees that the cute boy Mike they met online really IS the age he says he is and has pictures to prove it, she will think it is safe to meet him. However, online predators could easily find pictures online and form a profile around it. Or if he/she is really creepy (like the story we heard in class), he could take photos of his own son and pretend it is himself. Due to technology and the easiness of posting photos online, I can also foresee some issues other than fake identities. Many young teens are insecure or have low self esteem and often use the internet as a way to gain social approval. This could lead many underage teens to post inappropriate pictures of them online to gain approval of being told how attractive they are. Although I don’t think this will become a widespread, prevalent problem, I have a feeling that the new camera technology will be misused by teenagers, especially since many computers come with it already built in to the machine. Many issues may also arise of children developing social problems or social phobias because they become so used to interacting with others only online. The PIU theory we learned in class covers this slightly, but I think this problem can still be studied a lot more. Different age groups and different environmental factors (such as bullies at school, bad home life, etc) all may have a different effect on ones addiction to the internet. It may also have different consequences for their FtF social interactions as well.
As a result, some theories will hold true for years to come, and others will soon die out. With the anonymity and ability to get responses quickly, online social support will grow in popularity. It allows people the advantage to never have to leave their home, receive help at any hour of the day, and allow them to ask questions that they would be afraid to ask in real life. Also, as I have already discussed, with the ability to alter one’s self presentation online, I think the Hyperpersonal model will continue to explain how people perceive one another online. It helps to explain how people form the wrong impressions of others by over attributing the cues and information they receive. This then causes problems when leaving virtuality and people begin to communicate face to face; of then the person they expect to meet is entirely different. With the ability to self select the jokes you make, the type of information you give out, and what types of interests you want to discuss, when can easily form the wrong impression.
One theory that is likely to change is Cues Filtered Out (CFO). It predicts that a lack of cues in CMC will lead to neutral, negative, underdeveloped impressions of your partner. I think that with the technology we have today and the types of attributes websites have (such as photos, and font colors, and ability to have links, etc), it is very difficult to form a neutral or underdeveloped impression of someone. If anything, you may form a stereotyped and wrong impression (as described by Hyperpersonal), but it is nearly impossible to form an underdeveloped one from a lack of cues.
This class was a lot of fun and it was very interesting to learn about all these theories. Since all of us use the internet and Facebook everyday, many of these theories are very applicable and relatable to our daily life. In the future, however, I think it would be fun to learn more about behavioral changes and flirty behavior on line. Such as when people are very flirty and say certain comments that they would not say in a FtF setting. Or, to learn about people’s desire to use the internet to self disclose personal and private information, such as on Postsecret.com.
Thanks for a great semester!

Bonus Assignment: The Future of Comm 245

The concepts learned in Comm 245: Psychology of Social Computing, were very effective in explaining modern day internet use and its impact on society. The problem, however, is that advances in internet technology are occurring everyday. Perhaps by next year when this course is taught again, the curriculum will have to be updated because of the constant changes in technology. For the future of Psychology of Social Computing, I predict that some theories will hold, however, some will need to be altered, and new theories will be created.

One important aspect of the internet is its dimensions. These dimensions are key tools that help to form and define many theories and will continue to be crucial in the future. Important dimensions of psychological spaces include anonymity, synchronicity, and persistence. Based on how internet use has progressed over time, these dimensions will continue to have an impact but in different ways. For example, as technology works to keep individuals connected, it is now possible to communicate with others through webcam and over time it will probably become even easier. As a result, this type of online psychological space will have a very small degree of anonymity because a person can be seen and heard and has little control over their self expression. Also, technological improvements will be able to minimize the time delay, making this sort of communication very synchronous. In addition to these two factors that seem very similar to communicating face-to face, the dimension of persistence would also be very high because almost everything on the internet today is recordable. This dimension would make communication very different from face-to-face interaction and would probably spark many new ideas and theories about communication.

An important theory that was emphasized throughout this course was the Hyperpersonal Model which has five components. Based on its main points and the current technological advancements, I think that this theory would become obsolete unless it were to be modified. The first component, over-attributional processes, would not be accurate in the future. It is based on the fact that people overattribute certain aspects of ones personality due to lack of cues (verbal and non-verbal). This, however, will not be as much of an issue if technology continues to move in the direction it is in now. Again, the developmental aspect explains how it will take longer to form impressions of others with internet use which will decline in importance as technology works to bring people closer together. The other three features of the hyperpersonal model will also become obsolete for the same reasons because the issue of reduced cues in CMC will be eliminated as we move into the future.

As the internet becomes more accessible, these changes will probably encourage more use and attract a wider variety of people. Therefore, the concept of internet addiction might become a more salient issue in society and more research about it will need to be conducted.

At the current time, this course does not fail to address any important concepts about communicating in CMC. The one aspect that I think should be stressed throughout this course, however, is how the rapidly changing environment on the internet leads to the development of new theories almost everyday.

Anonymity Begins to “See” it’s Decline Online

The entirely visually-anonymous, text-based medium that we tend to think of as CMC is slowly changing. The comfort that parallels with sitting behind one's computer screen, physical appearance unknown to the world, is one of the bases for many of the theories of that we have learned about in COMM 245 thus far. With the advent of Facebook, Skype, and multiple other psychological spaces that give visual information about physical appearance, anonymity is beginning to decline in CMC. Relationships and interpersonal interactions online will likely be the domains in which such changes will occur, as physical appearance is often the first thing we notice about someone before they open their mouth to say a word, or in CMC, type a sentence.

In an online space, people first have the opportunity to get to know someone and then eventually meet the person, seeing their physical appearance. This is a complete reversal of what occurs in a face to face setting, in which people seem to filter others out based on physical appearance, and then take the steps to get to know them. Mckenna’s Relationship Facilitation factors include five features that may be distorted if the anonymity of the internet is reduced. When we introduce pictures and lose the anonymity of the internet, the gating features of face to face communication suddenly reappear. Additionally, the gating features of any psychological space including physical attractiveness, status cues, and shyness, will no longer be removed on the internet, thus losing that equaling of the playing field for those who do not feel as socially competent and enjoy the safety of sitting behind their computer screens in social interactions.

Typically, the visual anonymity of the internet allows for disinhibited behaviors such as increased self-disclosure as a result of increased self-awareness and decreased public-awareness. However, with the disappearance of anonymity online, people may be less willing to divulge such personal information if they no longer believe that they are a “stranger on the train.” “Google Images” will now often produce a picture of people when their names are searched, leaving no room for the selective self-presentation and psychological processes of behavioral confirmation that make up part of Walther’s (1996) Hyperpersonal Model. I do not believe that the Hyperpersonal Model will no longer be applicable next year, but I do think that as we reduce the anonymity of the internet space, the allowance of time for an individual to choose his or her words carefully and give off the best impression of him or herself may too begin to dissolve.

This leveling of the anonymity present online and in face to face interactions may lead to a decline in the amount of time people are spending online, increasing social interactions face to face. This would be quite ironic as technological innovations are typically set in place to further our use of technology. The internet has made such developments and innovations meant to increase social interaction and improve upon itself, that it is beginning to take us back in the other direction to where communication started: Face to face.

Extra Credit Post: What's to come? More CMC

The future of the class this entry is for, the Psychology of Social Computing is going to change a great deal. What is going to make this change is the arrival of new generations that have lived their entire lives surrounded by the internet and a world that changes very rapidly with technology.

Theories now are done with people who are normally very comfortable with computer mediated communication (CMC) but who have not necessarily grown up with it. As a culture, we still see excessive time spent online as a bad thing. I expect in the future, as more and more important things in lives, business or personal, are done online, it will be more accepted to spend more time online. This is going to change a lot of views on the theories surrounding CMC. CFO perspectives will virtually disappear because it will be understood that time as mentioned Social Information Processing theory it a large part of how much people know about each other. People will grow up online, like in person, and will not view a difference between CMC and FtF making the CFO assumptions disappear as a CMC phenomenon.

However, the theories that are going to really escalate in scale, and possibly have to be adjusted or completely changed, are the ones like Impression Management. The better technologies are going to change the ease and ability of people being able to represent themselves online. This will be very important to see because people are going to obviously try to show a better light of who they are. Also, since CMC will be used more and more often, it will become less and less important if someone is presenting a different avatar or picture or any description of their real self.

That will be one of the most interesting changes. If we spend 3 hours doing online communicating now, and 3-6 FtF, what happens when the ratio switches? If we are spending twice as much time communicating online than face to face, I think that it will change two different things. The first, I think lying about some identity cues will become less of a problem, I also think that the representation online, (think Impression Management) will become more important as well. Current face to face “sayings” like you can only make one first impression, will be integrated into CMC and people will adjust to that, and want to have more control of their representations.

So to wrap up a relatively scattered entry, the biggest change in the way Psychology of Social computing will be studied, is going to come from the increased integration of CMC into our lives, and the better technology and the changes that will make to CMC.

Bonus: What will teh future actually hole?

Communications 245 future is very interesting because of the technological advancements that are occurring. Technology will change theories we hold now about impression formation. I think that some of the theories will stay the same, while others will evolve into bigger and better ideas.

Communicating on the Internet used to be through CMC, but now has evolved into a combination of CMC and FTF. Computers now come with a built in camera, and we are capable of video chatting. This takes the wall down from CMC and transforms it into FTF. This is where our first theory comes in; Hyperpersonal Model will evolve into another theory because with a CMC interaction you can only learn so much. This then moves to a FTF by video chatting helping the attraction over the Internet to occur. I am not sure if this will help or hurt the “supposedly” increased intensity in attraction. Being online people can portray them in the best way possible and selectively present certain cues about one self. By adding the video chat will this cause “gender switches” or digital deceptions to occur a lot less and help interactions online to become more of a comfortable interaction?

Our dependence with the internet/computers will lead to increased problems with Internet deception. This deception will lead to many problems because no one will really know who is who unless they video chat online. We can still use Social Information Processing Theory since we can still adapt cues into the verbal channel even with the new changes.

Even though it is a big issue now, Problematic Internet Usage will become even bigger of an issue in the future. With the computers advancement, everything is at the tips of our fingers. We soon can watch TV from our computer and have no need for actual televisions in our rooms. Attractions might become more intense leading to more problems due to internet dating taking off. Will Youtube or Facebook evolve into a bigger time consuming monster then it already is now?

What will happen in the future is unpredictable and will be very interesting to follow. This means that this course’s future will be on a rise because the internet seems to be getting richer and richer as the years progress.

Bonus Assignment: The Future Freaks Me Out...

When deciding what it is, exactly, that the future of the internet, and the subsequent psychology associated with it, will hold, I first tried to figure out what it is that will change most. It can generally be agreed upon that the internet of the future will be faster, have better graphics, be more involved/realistic, and be more universal. All of these changes, on their own, are positive, and should generally make internet use a more positive experience for everyone. It is likely, however, that these changes will bring with them an increased occurrence of problematic internet use, a serious problem that afflicts a myriad of different internet users around the world today.

Currently, problematic internet use is defined by Caplan (2004) as maladaptive cognitions and behaviors involving Internet use that result in negative academic, professional, and social consequences. Maladaptive behavior includes both excessive, amount of time exceeding planned, and compulsive, inability to control one’s online activity, use. Caplan also came up with the Theory of Problematic Internet Use and Psychological Well-Being, which reads as follows:

1. individuals with psychosocial problems hold negative perceptions about their social competence
2. these individuals prefer online interaction because it is less threatening and they feel more efficacious
3. preference for online interaction leads to excessive and compulsive online interaction, which then worsens their problems (at school, home, work)

1, leads to 2, which leads to 3, which only increases the feelings and emotions that are experienced in 1, creating a self perpetuating cycle that results in a downward emotional spiral.

People are still going to have problems in the future, so it seems unlikely that the psychological problems that lead to problematic internet use are going to be leaving society anytime soon. There are also, however, properties of the internet that encourage and promote problematic internet use. These include, but are not limited to, availability, access to human contact twenty-four-seven, worlds and environments that allow you to escape from your own, and online social interaction methods that can, for some, act as a substitute for real world social interactions. It can be expected that these properties will only become stronger as the internet advances and becomes more effective at drawing users in.

Imagine this: An online world that is as real as life itself. In this world you can walk around, you can eat, you can talk with your friends, you can live in your expensive house, you can drive your boats and your cars, and you can kiss and make love to your significant other. All of this, as real to you as life itself. Now, ask yourself why, if you had a dream world where none of life’s real problems existed, would you ever want to leave?

12: CMC in the Future

I think that in the future, as new technologies are created, we will see even more computer mediated communication. It will be interesting to see how people will respond to new technology. Right now, so many of us are online all of the time to the point that problematic internet use has been recognized as a type of problem. So will we eventually “correct ourselves” and focus more on ftf interactions with future generations? Will we ever stop and say enough is enough? Children are getting on the computer at younger and younger ages, will it ever become a TV replacement? Overall, I think it will be fascinating to see how we will continue to deal with the new media, how we will raise our kids in a media-dominant society and the different directions the media will move in.

While I believe this new technology will change theories we hold now about impression formation, I think that some of the basic ideas of theories will stay the same. With regards to the Cues Filtered Out Perspective, I think that it will slowly start to fade and not really be used anymore. At this point in time, it is not truly accurate of the impressions people make online, so in the future, I do not think it will be used. However, I think that the Social Information Processing Theory and the Hyperpersonal model will continue into the future. People will continue to adapt cues into the verbal channel and while I think that the length of time needed to get an impression similar to ftf will keep getting shorter, for now, time is still needed. With the hyperpersonal model, I think that online, because people can, they will try to portray themselves in the best way possible and selectively self present certain cues, and then will over attribute the few cues they receive. While it may be harder to do this in the future, I do not think it will go away very quickly.

A topic that might be a part of psychology of social computing in the future is virtual classrooms. Will they become common in colleges and universities? What does a community look like in this type of “classroom,” do students do better or worse, should there even be virtual classrooms? Classes right now have changed to keep up with cmc with powerpoints instead of writing on the board and discussion boards online. Will education continue to move in a cmc direction?

Magic 8 Ball of the Psychology of the Internet

Technological determinism, the view that the availability of technology dictates our behaviour, probably wouldn't hold up very well. Technology will no doubt improve in the future and will probably make CMC come very close to FtF communication, but our interactions over CMC will still maintain a considerable distance from our FtF interactions. Even if the technology is available, people will probably still choose not to use some of it.

Visual anonymity will still remain a big part of the reason people are so attracted to the Internet. You can actively interact with other people, but they don't have to see you at the moment. Even though Social Distance Theory mostly applies to lying over CMC, it is still an indication of our comfort level over various social distances. On some days, all of us will feel both the need for company and the lack of desire to make ourselves presentable. Even more fundamentally, we rely on the lack of non-verbal cues to shield us from judgment and help us become a more ideal self (out of the four aspects of the "self). Cues Filtered Out, instead of a negative thing, will precisely be the main attraction of the Internet. It allows for the effective removal of gating features. Even with the technology available now (webcam, video conference, etc), we still choose to remain anonymous. A friend recently told me that he only uses his webcam for close friends and family. So if a chatroom requires webcam communication to make CMC closer to FtF, the chatroom will probably have a rocky future because it is ripping through most people's safety blanket of anonymity.

So a fundamental thing that will stay the same even as technology changes is people's mentality to stay behind the veil of anonymity. Even if technology allows for it, people would not want to make CMC too much like FtF. This will, to some degree, limit the market for some new technology. That's why the webcame market is not as big as one would think it should be. (Come on, long-distance visual communication? That should be a hot item straight out of a cool sci-fi movie. But it's not.)

A future issue that we may want to discuss in this class is Internet crimes. We covered a little bit of it during the Digital Deception unit. But there are so many of them out there! Why do we feel okay downloading movies and music illegally while we won't normally walk out of a store with a CD under our jackets? Does CMC actually diminish our feelings of right and wrong and confuse our moral compass? That would be a very interesting phenomenon to study.

An Unknown and Exciting Future

Throughout this year, we have studied numerous theories and phenomena regarding social computing and its psychological effects. Although no one can truly know what the future will hold, we always have and will continue to make predictions. As the world becomes more dependent on computers and the Internet, I believe a few theories in particular will hold true. First, the Hyperpersonal Model, as CMC will always lead to a reduced breath of content (there is only so much you can learn over the Internet about a person) and consequently lead to an increased intensity in attributions. In addition, a few others include Media Richness Theory, Social Distance Theory and the Feature-based Model of deception. In terms of the former, as our society becomes increasingly computer dependent (with online dating becoming even more popular with time), there will always be a need for a match between the equivocality of a task and the appropriate means of communication. As for the latter, I believe an increase in social computing dependence will lead to increased problems with Internet deception, and therefore, both theories will be important, as they predict which medium will be used for different forms of deception. Finally, Caplin’s Theory on Problematic Internet Use will also hold, as greater social computing dependence will lead to greater PIU symptoms.

A few theories that will not be applicable in the future include Social Presence Theory, Reduced Social Context Cues and Social Information Processing. As we are currently seeing trends toward increased Internet dating (and modality switching actually working), these theories that predict less social presence, poorly developed and negative impression formation, and slower impression formation in CMC, respectively, will not hold in the future. Moreover, if these were even entirely true today, I do not believe there would be such an increase in Internet dating.

Certainly, we have learned quite a bit about the psychology of social computing. From examining impression formation via computer mediated communication to studying the switch from an online relationship to off, Comm 245 has covered a great range. However, new technologies are born everyday. Thus, many studies that seem pertinent today may not be appropriate tomorrow. As video chat has become increasingly popular, perhaps studying the technology’s effects on impression/relationship development may provide interesting results. Furthermore, in light of the future, maybe studies on dating through virtual reality may also be applicable, as our society moves closer toward blending the online world with reality.