Teen Internet Addiction: The Disinhibition Effect

We are all equals: cyberspace and the minimization of authority

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This is the final blog on the topic of cyberspace and disinhibited teen behavior. When teens are online a person's status in the face-to-face world may not be known or it may not have as much impact as it does in three-dimensional reality. If the teen cannot see a person or the surroundings of a person, they may not know if that person's title carries authority or if they are an ordinary person lounging around at home in front of the computer. Even if teens do know something about a person's off-line status and power, that elevated position may have little impact on their online presence and influence. Teens tend to view everyone on the internet as an equals, as having a mutual and shared opportunity to give voice to their ideas and opinions. According to a typical teen, everyone, regardless of status, wealth, race, and gender starts off on a level playing field in cyberspace.

Teens are reluctant to say what they think when they stand before an authority figure. A fear of disapproval and punishment from "on high" dampens the spirit when in close proximity to power figure. But online, in what feels like a peer relationship, teens experience authority as minimized and thus they are much more willing to  speak out or misbehave. Teens see everyone as equal in cyberspace. Teens point to the fact that the Internet itself is engineered with no centralized authority or control. Teens see themselves as having endless potential for creating new environments and as result see themselves as independent minded explorers. This atmosphere contributes to a limited sense of authority and to increased disinhibited behavior.

The key issue with respect to teens and disinhibited behavior in cyberspace is to facilitate a dialogue about choices. The fact that cyberspace can contribute to disinhibited behavior does not mean parents or authority figures should clamp down on cyber expression. Rather, the better strategy is to point out how the unique and novel dynamics of cyberspace contribute to choices that the teen may live to regret. As has been noted in prior blogs, the best way to address online behavior is to empower teens with education and appropriate choices.

Teen internet addiction: the disinhibition effect

As is described in the previous blog John Suler discusses the disinhibition effect of teen behavior in cyberspace. The previous blog discussed how anonymity and invisibility contribute to disinhibited behavior.

This blog will focus on what is referred to as "asynchronicity" and "dissociative imagination."

See you later: asynchronicity


Whether in an e-mail or on a message board, communication in cyberspace can be asynchronous -- which simply means communication in cyberspace does not have occur in real time. When using cyber communication, teens can decide whether they want to respond in minutes, hours, days, or even months. Due to the fact teens can use cyber communication without having to react to a conversation partner's immediate reaction, disinhibition is increased. In real time we are confronted with having to deal with real feedback, problems, controversy, and disconnections. However, when in cyberspace, there are delays, which can contribute to making comments or giving feedback that is confrontational, rude, overly personal, or dramatic. We can all freeze time in cyberspace which contributes to communicating and then running for cover. In cyberspace we do not have to focus on or address the immediate consequences of our choices if we choose not to: we can hit the pause button and disappear.

It's just a game: dissociative imagination


Due to the fact teens can create what ever identity they want in cyberspace, that they are free to create a make-believe dimension (a dream world), separate and apart from the demands and responsibilities of the real world, their cyber behavior is more likely to be disinhibited. Teens in cyberspace split or disassociate online fiction from off-line fact. Teens are particularly vulnerable to viewing their online life as a kind of game with rules and norms that do not apply to everyday life. Once a teen has turned off the computer and returned to daily life, they often believe they can leave the cyber game and their cyber identity behind. The teen reflects: "why should I be held responsible for what happens in a make-believe world that has nothing to do with my reality?" As a result of being able to split off or disassociate online behavior from off-line reality, teenagers may become dangerously disinhibited or reckless.

Teen Internet Addiction: The Disinhibition Effect

John Suler has written about a phenomenon he calls the "disinhibition effect" of cyberspace. Suler states internet users say and do things in cyberspace that ordinarily they would not say or do in face-to-face encounters. This is particularly true of teens, who feel they can utilize the internet to disclose their deepest fears, desires, and opinions. Teens often reveal secret emotions and wishes and offer and receive open and direct feedback in a manner that they would typically avoid in school or community settings. There is something about cyberspace that removes internal inhibition or barriers and can lead to the open, honest and creative expression of ideas and feelings as well as the disclosure of highly personal and sensitive information that should remain in the private sphere.

What causes cyberspace disinhibition? What is it about cyberspace that loosens psychological barriers that typically block the release of inner feelings and needs? Suler states several factors are at play. For some individuals one or two factors produce most of the disinhibition effect. However, in most cases, multiple factors interact with each other, supplement each other, resulting in a more complicated and amplified effect.

This blog will be divided into three parts in order to give careful consideration to each of the factors that lead to disinhibition.

Part one: 

Dissociative anonymity
As teenagers and adults travel through cyberspace they have the option of concealing their identity and thereby remain fully anonymous. Travelers through cyberspace can have no name--  or at least not a real name. They can disclose their age or choose not to conceal their age. The traveler can report intimate details and preferences, likes, and dislike -- or they can choose not to disclose anything of substance. The bottom line is anonymity works to escalate the disinhibition effect. When people have the opportunity to separate their behavior online from their real-world identity off-line, they feel less vulnerable about being disinhibited. Whatever they say or do in cyberspace cannot be directly linked to their lives off-line. For teenagers this means that they do not have to take responsibility for their behavior by acknowledging their identity. When acting out hostile feelings, for example, teens can bully, intimidate, and behave in provocative ways with full and complete immunity due to anonymity.

Invisibility
The disinhibition effect is escalated further by the choice to remain invisible in cyberspace. Through e-mail,  message boards, chat rooms, and blogs a person's identity in terms of their name, age, and even geographical location may be clear. However, whether using e-mail or chatting or blogging a person can choose to remain physically invisible. The opportunity to be invisible amplifies the disinhition effect because it eliminates the need to focus on how a person looks and sounds when they communicate. If we do not have to consider how our conversation partner's physical and auditory presentation when they communicate the nature of communication is fundamentally changed.

Being able to see a person frown, shake their head, look confused, bored, or upset influences how we communicate. As 70 % of communication is broadcast across non-verbal channels, the fact that internet communication can eliminate non-verbal communication allows a speaker to take risks and stretch boundaries in a way he/she would not if in a face to face encounter. By taking in broadband communication --   facial expressions, tone of voice, changes in emotional states -- our intention to communicate is constantly evolving as we modify our intentions based on the flow of information. In summary, if we are invisible and our conversation partners are invisible, communication tends to lack consideration of the consequences of our communicative intentions. By not being able to see and hear an individual, the door to disinhibited behavior swings wide open.

In the next blog we  will cover how asynchronicity and dissociative imagination  contribute to disinhibition in cyber space.

Update:Youth and Media Lab At The Berkman Center

Youth and Media Lab

Expanding its work on young people and digital technologies, the Berkman Center is launching a youth-driven R&D lab for media literacy and digital empowerment – the Youth and Media Lab. more > Here is an announcement from the Berkman Center at Harvard:  "Expanding its work on young people and digital technologies, the Berkman Center is launching a youth-driven R&D lab for media literacy and digital empowerment – the Youth and Media Lab - supported by a grant from the McCormick Foundation."  "The Lab will bring together a small, diverse, and highly motivated group of talented young people with leading researchers and developers from the Berkman Center and with mentors from the Center’s broader network. The Lab will engage in innovative and creative ways with the core challenges and opportunities that youth encounter online, including issues such as online safety, privacy, credibility/information quality, civic participation, and entrepreneurship."
  "The Lab’s activities will focus on exploratory research, curriculum building, tool development and testing, and peer teaching and learning. Goals include increasing youth participation, promoting innovation, and fostering entrepreneurship."
  "The Lab will be based in Cambridge, but the Berkman Center’s Youth and Media team is eager to develop a global network of labs and partners, involving young people from distinct settings and backgrounds with one another and with a larger global community."

Understanding Teen Internet Addiction: digital natives versus digital immigrants

Parents now see their children spend multiple hours every day on computers, cell/smart phones, and gaming systems and are understandably concerned. Parents often tell their children the computer is a waste of time, Facebook isn't a meaningful way to communicate, texting reduces their ability to communicate, and their reliance on technology decreases their capacity to attend to such crucial tasks as reading books and writing papers.

Children respond to their parents concerns and complaints with a simple rejoinder: "You are tech phobic. You have no idea what you are talking about. You are living in the past!" Certainly, both parents and children have a valid perspective and differences in their perspectives can best be attributed to growing up in vastly different technological generations. The term "digital native" and "digital immigrant" was coined by Mark Prensky to describe this new divide between parents and today's children/teens. These terms designate people born in the digital era (generation X) and people born before the digital era (baby boomers). Certainly not all digital immigrants are the same. Some digital immigrants are enthusiastic about new technology, while others are committed to avoiding new technology. Technological "avoiders" prefer a lifestyle free of or with minimal engagement with new technology. They tend to have a landlines and may refuse to use cell phones or e-mail.

The differences between the digital native generation and the digital immigrant generation can be divided as follows.

Digital immigrants:

Prefer to talk on the phone or in person, text sparingly, prefer synchronistic communication, are accustomed to and like to read manuals with clear steps, assume they will work their way up the ladder in the workplace (in a linear fashion, in one career), enjoy face-to-face contact with their friends, value the use of proper english, use the internet to gather information, think young people are wasting their lives via online research (wikipedia generation) and communication, believe the internet is not "real life, " and have safety concerns such as kidnapping, assault, and robbery.

Digital natives:

Prefer to communicate via online chat, Facebook, videogame platforms and texting (more than 47% of teens can text with their eyes closed), prefer asynchronistic communication, do not utilize manuals (but prefer to problems solve intuitively), are interested in trying many careers, want balance between family, friends, activities, and work, prefer flexible hours, want opportunities to work remotely, socialize online in chat rooms, social networking sites, and gaming platforms, utilize texting and instant messaging shorthand rather than proper english, communicate about personal experiences by posting messages and posting photographs online, view the internet as real and often more pleasurable than off-line life, engage in multiple tasks or recreation activities at a time, and have safety concerns such as identity theft, privacy invasions, and cyber stalking.

Some families manage to successfully negotiate reasonable and equitable settlements with respect to the use of the internet, texting, gaming, and other forms of electronic communication and entertainment. These families tend to have parents who are open to new technology and may even be using technology in ways similar to their digital native offspring. These families also tend to see the use of current mode of technology as inevitable and therefore do not see the point in attempting to remove or inhibit the use of new technology.

Other families are concerned and highly anxious about how much time their children spend on the internet or gaming. They tend to communicate this anxiety and fear to their children, which falls on deaf ears. These parents tend to try to control their children's use of technology through setting parental controls, through the use of software, or by setting specific time limits. In response to these limitations children/teens work around the technological limits by lying, manipulating, and finding other ways continue to be online and play online games. In response to this defiance parents become increasingly frustrated, which eventually results in a locked power struggle. At this point, parents either resort to more extreme measures such as taking the computer away or they give up altogether. The child parent relationship escalates to alienation, disconnection, volatility, and even violence in certain cases.

The overwhelming consensus of current research on parental reactions to child/teen internet, smart phone, and gaming use is that working in a collaborative manner results in much more effective limit setting than does attempting to control or eliminate the use of current technologies. Current research also clearly reveals that many of the concerns that digital immigrants have of the lifestyles of digital natives are unfounded, particularly in the area of cyber stalkers, privacy and reputation.

The key to bridging the gap between digital immigrants and digital natives lies with the digital immigrants. Digital immigrants need to become more aware of the benefits of new media and technological platforms. With this said, many digital natives do not seem to have a reasonable or realistic sense of how much time they spend online, in chat rooms, texting, and gaming. As a typical child/teen is spending more than seven hours per day engaged with some form of technology, it is certainly a reasonable concern of digital immigrants that there are better ways to spend time: reading a book, writing a letter, hiking, swimming, going to the movies, eating out, traveling, and talking face-to-face.

Digital immigrants and digital natives have a great deal to offer one another, to teach one another, and to share with one another. If parents can be open to understanding the ways in which their children/teens think about technology and how technology is integrated into their lives, they will certainly have a better opportunity to offer opinions and provide guidance and influence. Likewise, digital natives need to learn to consider that their digital immigrant parents have a perspective on technology that could advance the quality of their lives.

More on the subject of digital immigrants and digital natives to come in additional blogs.

Prevent Cyber Addiction: Rules for Internet Use from the Organization Enough is Enough

RULES ’N TOOLS® CHECKLIST FOR PARENTS, EDUCATORS, AND OTHER CARING ADULTS
Implement both safety rules and software tools to protect children online. Focus on the positives of Internet use while teaching children about the dangers and how to make wise choices online.
“Rules”
Establish an ongoing dialogue and keep lines of communication open.
Supervise use of all Internet-enabled devices.
Know your child’s online activities and friends.
Regularly check the online communities your children use, such as social networking and gaming sites, to see what information they are posting.
Supervise the photos and videos your kids post and send online.
Discourage the use of webcams and mobile video devices.
Teach your children how to protect personal information posted online and to follow the same rules with respect to the personal information of others.
Be sure your children use privacy settings.
Instruct your children to avoid meeting face-to-face with someone they only know online or through their mobile device.
Teach your children how to respond to cyberbullies.
Establish an agreement with your children about Internet use at home and outside of the home (see Rules ’N Tools® Youth Pledge).
“Tools”
Set age-appropriate filters.
Consider using monitoring software, especially if you sense your child is at risk.
Periodically check your child’s online activity by viewing your browser’s history.
Set time limits and consider using time-limiting software.
Disallow access to chat rooms and only allow live audio chat with extreme caution.
Limit your child’s instant messaging (IM) contacts to a parent-approved buddy list.
Use safe search engines. Set up the family’s cyber-security protections.
Utilize parental controls on your child’s mobile phone and other mobile devices.
Parental controls should be utilized on all Internet-enabled devices (desktops, laptops; and gaming, mobile, and music devices). However, these resources are not a substitute for parental supervision.

Commentary: Berkman Center Study on Teen Internet Addiction

Commentary: The Berkman Center for Internet and Society's research on youth and media.

In reviewing the research by the Berkman Center at Harvard University I was surprised to learn there is a disconnect between the fears and concerns adults have regarding youth media practices and the research/science on the consequences of youth media practices.

Overall, the researchers at the Berkman Center have a positive and optimistic view of the future of the relationship between youth and media/technology. The opportunities for the development of skills, both technical and interpersonal, is emphasized throughout their research. Rather than view the Internet and social media as inherently dangerous or inherently useless/mindless, the research on youth media patterns and practices suggests otherwise. Research is clear youth are far more interested in creating meaningful content, in sharing and communicating, in maintaining privacy, in maintaining their own safety on the Internet, and in protecting their reputations than adults believe.

The differences that exist between youth (or "digital natives") and adults (or "digital immigrants") is significant and constantly changing and evolving. The typical parent/ adult is skeptical and fearful of the transformations in the media landscape. Adults are concerned children and teens are being stalked by cyber predators, are sending personal and confidential information out into cyberspace indiscriminately, and wasting time mindlessly chatting, surfing, and instant messaging and texting.

It is surprising to learn research studies do not show an increase in overall predatory behavior as a result of the expansion of media use by young people. The youth who are most at risk online are those who are most at risk off-line, such as victims of sexual and physical abuse and children from impoverished or unstable homes. Furthermore, youth are far more likely to engage in dangerous or risky behavior with other youth rather than with predatory adults. Although cyber bullying certainly occurs, youth are far more concerned with bullying that occurs at school and feel that they are more vulnerable to and affected by face to face or three-dimensional bullying that occurs at school or another community settings. The bottom line from the Berkman Center is the Internet is safer and has a far more positive influence on youth then parents/adults understand and beleive.

With all of this said, there are important issues the Berkman Center study does not address: namely, the way in which new technologies can take over the lives of youth and produce changes in the way youth process information, particularly the level at which they can maintain their attention.

Dalton Conley, a social biologists, is one of many scientists who are analyzing the way in which youth are affected by constant their "connectivity" to multiple technologies. Conley suggests, in an article in the February 21, 2011 edition of Time magazine, that "scientific evidence increasingly suggests that, amid all the texting, poking and surfing, our children's digital lives are turning them into much different creatures from us-- and not necessarily for the better."

Conley points to the problem of what researchers now refer to as "continuous partial attention." A Kaiser Family Foundation report released in 2010 found that on average children ages 8 to 18 are spending seven hours and 38 minutes a day using entertainment media. If each content stream is counted separately, a majority of American youth are texting while watching TV, they are logging almost 11 hours of media usage per day.

Conley, citing research from Stanford University, states that one of the concerns about youth involvement in multiple media is that they experience a high degree of pleasure while engaged with media/technology -- due to the fact interaction with technology/media releases the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine is responsible for creating pleasurable states in the brain. The experience of pleasure creates a “forward-feeding cycle” in which youth pay more and more attention to texts, instant messaging, posts on social media sites at the expense of their ability to sustain their focus on writing, reading, or engaging in problem solving that requires sustained attention.

Conley also points to a problem with the way teens utilize media and electronic communication, and that is they often have access to their smart phones, computers, etc.,  seven days a week, twenty four hours per day. As a result, many youth are sleep deprived and do not have downtime or private time to think and process what occurred during the course of the day. The constant connectivity deprives youth of the ability to be alone, to make use of time when they are alone, and to be able to disconnect and digest social experiences.

Another concern  I have with current media practices, including video gaming, is that children and teens whom have pre-existing social-emotional problem are far more likely to become compulsively involved in the use of media. Children and teens who lack appropriate social skills, who feel disconnected and alienated from their peer group, who are unable to initiate and sustain relationships, receive very little (or any) true benefit from their relationship to media/technology. In fact, many youth would benefit from being in an environment where they were completely "unplugged" from all and every form of electronic entertainment and media access.

Understandably, for many families with children/teens with special needs, the computer, video games, and other technology are perceived as an essential part of their involvement or connection to the world. Although youth with special needs are certainly drawn to media and technology, it is not the case this involvement is essential or important. The problem for many parents is when they consider limiting access to media and technology, they are confronted with a daunting problem: what will they do with their child/teen instead?

There is no question unplugging children/teens from electronic entertainment and social media will result in protests, complaints, and possibly tantrums -- while shifting responsibility to structure and plan leisure and recreation to parents -- which seem to be an impossible challenge to successfully navigate.

However, the conflict and rough terrain that lies ahead for parents who choose to significantly limit or eliminate access to electronic entertainment and social media is worth the effort, as it provides children/teens with social-emotional deficits the opportunity to live in reality and to become competent in reality, instead of living in perpetual fantasy. The ongoing involvement in fantasy via virtual reality is proving to be a major obstacle to social and vocational development that needs to addressed head on. 

Advice: don't waste time! 

Unplug and begin to create new experiences of pleasure and satisfaction separate and apart from technology.