Seeking meaningful online relationships
Given the huge volume of people we can interact with online, I keep asking myself: how can I have meaningful relationships online? Here I share early considerations from a first investigation.
The internet is massive. I consistently bookmark more articles that I have time to read. I regularly come across people I feel excited to learn more about and possibly meet and work with. Possibilities online are virtually endless for the individual. Yet, many complain that online interpersonal interactions are shallow and not enriching.
For me, people are a fundamental conductor of meaning and information. Connections and feelings help me learn and find meaning. So I ask myself more and more how can I have meaningful relationships online? My first brief investigation landed on two ideas: disclose and energise.
📖 Self-disclosure
Many psychologists consider self-disclosure essential1 for all intimate relationships.
Examining the literature about the psychology of online relationships, I surprisingly noticed that self-disclosure occupies a large2 portion of it.
A few studies provide detailed and robust insights into the role that self-disclosure plays in online relationships. For example:
A survey3 on friendship quality of ~350 adolescents and young adults from Hong Kong that developed meaningful online relationships (and that have been socially withdrawn for six months or longer) revealed that their online relationships had higher4 breadth (the range of topics covered during conversations) and depth (the degree of self-disclosure which constitutes intimacy) than comparable5 past offline relationships;
An experiment6 with ~500 randomly selected participants who browsed randomly generated fake7 social media profiles with either 20 or 308 items showed that participants felt higher9 attributional confidence10 (e.g. I can predict well this person’s feelings and emotions) and interpersonal attraction11 (e.g., I would like to meet this person) towards the higher-breadth profiles (i.e. the 30 item ones).
So self-disclosure may generally lead to enriching online connections, there are also some caveats. First, we may want to employ self-disclosure with care and not learn the hard way when to avoid disclosure
Second, are self-disclosing interaction conducive to enriching relationships across cultures? For instance, different cultures seem to build and maintain trust in different ways.
Thus, we may have more to learn about how to constructively disclose in different (online) cultural contexts. While this may seem irrelevant today, for demographic reasons it is unlikely that the internet will remain as US-centric as it is today.
🔋 Self-energising
Online relationships are probably less circumstantial than offline ones. That is, we follow someone on Twitter because we (hopefully) like what they write. We reply to someone on Reddit because we are engaged by their opinion. Sticky online relationships emerge from a vast ocean of options so they should theoretically release higher energy than the many possibilities we forego for them.
What if the internet could give us the freedom to seek connections that energise and empower us in ways that only a handful of in-person connections can do during a lifetime? The vast amount of possible people we can encounter and interact with online is what makes Malcolm Ocean’s vision of collaborative self-energising relationships possible
Using the energy that an online relationship releases on both ends seem like a great barometer for the quality and meaning of a relationship. Yet, it is an aspect I haven’t found much research about, but I would like to investigate more. If you know anything in regard, please let me know.
Google Scholar returns about 5m results for “online relationships” and 900k results for “online relationships self disclosure”
Chan, Gloria Hong-Yee, and T. Wing Lo. "Do friendship and intimacy in virtual communications exist? An investigation of online friendship and intimacy in the context of hidden youth in Hong Kong." Revista de cercetare si interventie sociala 47 (2014): 117.
On a scale from 1 to 7 participants evaluated the breadth and depth of online relationships respectively 0.45 and 0.22 higher than their offline counterparts
The authors assigned each participant to one of four levels of friendships (“Acquaintances”, “Friends”, “Good friends” and “Best friends”) and ask them to fill out a questionnaire about one online friendship and one offline friendship of the assigned level.
This was done to minimize the potential confounding effects of user differences in familiarity with existing platforms
Baruh, Lemi, and Zeynep Cemalcılar. "When more is more? The impact of breadth and depth of information disclosure on attributional confidence about and interpersonal attraction to a social network site profile owner." Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace 12.1 (2018).
Eye-tracking studies of social media users indicate that the number of attention points on various social media sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) varied between 20 to 30.
Rızvanoğlu, K., and Ö. Öztürk. "A close look at the phenomenon: an eye-tracking study on the usability of the profile pages in social networking sites." 7th International Symposium of Interactive Media Design. 2010.
ANOVA analysis showed that on a scale from 1 to 5 attributional confidence and interpersonal attraction were both 0.19 higher for high-breadth profiles than low-breadth ones. Furthermore, breadth of information accounted for 11% of the variation in attributional confidence which in turn accounted for 51% of the variation in interpersonal attraction, showing a significant mediation.
Clatterbuck, Glen W. "Attributional confidence and uncertainty in initial interaction." Human communication research 5.2 (1979): 147-157.
Montoya, R. Matthew, and Robert S. Horton. "On the importance of cognitive evaluation as a determinant of interpersonal attraction." Journal of personality and social psychology 86.5 (2004): 696.