TM 5

Manusia sebagai makhluk sosial berinteraksi dengan orang lain baik secara offline (face to face) maupun online.

Dalam penelitian Yuen dan Lavin's (2004): siswa pemalu lebih cenderung menggunakan internet secara kompulsif, karena ketrampilan sosialnya rendah.

"Internet memberikan tempat yang aman di mana perasaan ketidaknyamanan sosial dapat dikurangi “ (hal. 382).(perguruan tinggi menyumbang perilaku

online secara tidak sehat)

Dissociative Anonymity: Although not a formal pathology, the sense of self while online becomes compartmentalized into an “online self,” which is perceived as alone and anonymous, and an offline self that is different and separate. Because the Internet feels so virtual and boundaryless, it is tempting to perceive “the other” as not real.

Invisibility: You don’t have to worry about how you look when chatting with someone online. One need not worry, am I smiling enough, was that sigh of exasperation heard? What you have to write then takes on deeper meaning. Analyzing the textual clues of communication, without the nonverbal, leans heavily on one’s thinking . . . as thoughts can be the precursor to the written word.

Asynchronicity: For many online Communications, one can respond at one’s leisure, and the pressure of an immediate response is gone. Here, Suler talks about “emotional hit and run,” where a scathing message can be left on a message board and the poster never returns to check on the responses or repercussions of their words.

Solipsistic Introjection: As absorption in an online exchange increases, some experience the online companion as a “voice within one’s head” (Suler, 2004; p. 323).

The online friend becomes incorporated into one’s intrapsychic world. Like a character in our dreams, our waking thoughts include stories about various people.

Some of these interactions are real and immediate, while others are somewhat less so, such as an imagined comeback to your boss.

The boss is real but the exchange is not. The online friend can take on a special status in our imagined internal dialogues, which can result in a felt sense of special closeness existing outside the boundaries of time and space. But this can result in the opposite effect, too. With the lack of cues such as tone, expression, and body language, additional meanings are read into a message based on the reader’s assumptions, insecurities, and mood, often without the person even realizing that they are doing it. The result can be a fairly neutral or innocently meant statement or question being taken as a deadly insult by a person with low self-esteem or someone who is in a bad mood that day.

Dissociative Imagination: Some people keep careful boundaries between their online fi ctional selves and their real-world offline selves. So, for instance, in online role-playing games such as Everquest, when the computer is turned off, the online self as wizard is gone. The online world and the self that inhabits it become a separate realm of being. This provides the online self the freedom to do things which the offline self very likely wouldn’t do, such as flirt outrageously or act aggressively.

Minimization of Status and Authority: Although you know your boss has a different status from you at work, when responding to his e-mails, that gap minimizes. The playing fi eld seems level when online; thus, authority differences are minimized, and it becomes easy to make a nasty or sarcastic comment by e-mail that would never have been spoken face to face.