Survey: Girls Wear False Personas Online (True or False?)

Credit to Baily Weaver of Medford USA: (The Finger.jpg) Good day, I hope this photo doesn’t offend anyone. It’s just a finger. I’m actually really happy today but this is how I express my happiness. . . I’m hostile and many people mistake this sense of humor as being angry or negative. Nope, I bet I’ll laugh at least couple times today—maybe I’ll swallow steal and it will tickle my belly. Maybe I’ll even steal some car ornaments (I want to so bad). I do want to say my friends have left out of Medford and I didn’t and my boyfriend is at work :|. This time last year all I wanted was not a single person to be around me and now all I want is a little attention. Oh poor little Billy, you’ll be okay. . . unless you have a gas attack. I don’t trust my brain’s actions. Step away from the Billy Goat! (from Wikipedia)

The Girl Scout Research

Researcher Kimberlee Salmond of the Girl Scout Research Institute has involved over a thousand girls between the ages of fourteen and seventeen in her survey study about online personas and social networking. The results reveal eighty two percent of the research respondents think of themselves to be intelligent in real life even as they act like they’re fun online. Salmond says girls “come across” as more well rounded offline than when they’re online. It’s a hypothesis but the thinking (or notion of girls) is that “smarts,” or anything associated with intelligence and kindness, aren’t bankable online when socializing is involved. It’s interesting to note that ninety one percent of the participants use Facebook on a regular basis. Salmond adds how the online environment may not be the proper venue for expression of these qualities in girls.

The survey showed that girls with high self-esteem recognized the mismatch of their “real” and online personalities but that it’s the girls perceived to have low-self esteem which had the greater disparity between their actual and pseudo personalities. Compared to the participants with high self-esteem, more of the low-self-esteem-type of girls admitted to portraying a sexy image online.

Peer Approval Concerns

Now, apart from the expression of a false personality, the also girls expressed concern about online content which may put them in a bad light. Forty eight percent were bothered they might not get accepted in college because of things written about them on the Internet. Thirty nine percent feared rejection of friends and family as a result of the content on social networking sites (like Facebook). Interestingly, sixty eight percent of the girls reported having had an unpleasant experience online, usually from bullying or gossiping.

Salmond thinks girls believe that it’s the fun characteristics which will get them peer approval when social networking. But there’s the argument that this personality-changing phenomenon does not apply to other sites (like Triond) where intelligence may be considered more important than fun. Nevertheless, Salmond says parents should get involved in Facebook (and other sites they frequent) for them to be able to advise their children on how to manage their online personas.

IMAGE INFO: Originally posted to Flickr by baileyraeweaver at http://flickr.com/photos/10082321@N04/4392789087. It was reviewed on 04:16, 31 August 2010 (UTC) by the FlickreviewR robot and confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.

Why do women apologize more than men?