Amy Elkins Blog

In cyberspace the world gets a bit wonky at times. A recent article in the Mental Health and Behavior section of the New York Times talks about the "Online disinhibition effect" and addresses issues that have perhaps been stressing quite a few of us out for quite some time. In terms of how privacy vs public domains collide on my blog with such highly personal work being produced on and ongoing basis... and in terms of how the internet separates us from reality.. well it does often become a blurry line. What is too much for the world to know? How much of it is sacred and private and how much of it is tossed out to the masses? In reality I never assumed that this blog would be interesting to anyone other than myself, close friends and family. So I have received a strong lesson in internet realities myself in the past year, as this work has gotten attention from around the globe in a way that has frightened me at times. I often have to wonder how much attention people have given to this blog and how much they are investigating and looking through these time lines I've so carefully laid out for them.

Here are a few quotes from the article:

"Thoughts expressed while sitting alone at the keyboard would be put more diplomatically — or go unmentioned — face to face. Flaming has a technical name, the “online disinhibition effect,” which psychologists apply to the many ways people behave with less restraint in cyberspace.

In a 2004 article in the journal CyberPsychology & Behavior, John Suler, a psychologist at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J., suggested that several psychological factors lead to online disinhibition: the anonymity of a Web pseudonym; invisibility to others; the time lag between sending an e-mail message and getting feedback; the exaggerated sense of self from being alone; and the lack of any online authority figure. Dr. Suler notes that disinhibition can be either benign — when a shy person feels free to open up online — or toxic, as in flaming."

More here

And while on the topic... if you haven't seen You and Me and Everyone We Know you need to. It addresses so many things and is quite easily one of the best movies I've seen. Here's a still from the movie from a scene that is humorous but really frightening dealing with children and the internet.