Unpacking the pyramid model
You will realise that your behaviour is filling some need that isn’t being filled in your real life, some unresolved conflict or emotion, she said. It’s important to remember there’s probably a good reason some people you knew are no longer in your life.īut if you find yourself getting frustrated and upset, Paula Durlofsky, a psychologist and the author of “ Logged In and Stressed Out: How Social Media is Affecting Your Mental Health and What You Can Do About It ,” said you should ask yourself, “Why am I looking at somebody’s profile that I haven’t seen for a while or from a relationship that went bad? Why now?” They are searching for a feeling of nostalgia, or maybe “for comparison, comparing your life with somebody else’s life and what they’re doing versus what I’m doing.” “People stalk to check up on people who they may not otherwise check up on in real life,” she said. People social media stalk for various reasons, said Ebony Butler, a psychologist and the creator of My Therapy Cards. This voluntarily allows anyone connected to you to reach into your history, said Rosen, which is very different from actual stalking, which he defined as “observing someone’s behaviours or communication without them knowing, in a nefarious way.” Real stalking doesn’t involve permission, but with social media, Rosen asked, “how can you be violating somebody’s privacy while you’re looking at something they shared publicly and you’re connected as friends?” Most acquaintances fell out of your life, while a true relationship took work.īut today, Rosen said, social media allows us to “accrue these large caches of quote-unquote friends.” We communicate through what Rosen refers to as “non-directed self-disclosure,” as individuals post thoughts and pictures, but not aimed at any specific person. Communication was directed at a single person or small group. In the past, relationships were cultivated in person, via phone or by mail. ” Humans have an innate curiosity about what people are up to, said Rosen, and “we seek uncertainty reduction.” “There’s an element to that is very human nature,” said Devan Rosen, professor of emerging media at Ithaca College and the editor of “ The Social Media Debate: Unpacking the Social, Psychological, and Cultural Effects of Social Media. It’s normal and everyone - everyone - does it First things first: It’s not that stalkery, actually.
#Unpacking the pyramid model how to#
I spoke with four experts about how social media stalking affects our mental health and how to approach the situation if you worry your behaviour was noticed.
In my most recent case, I unliked the picture immediately, but still feared that I might have been caught. There is no good explanation for why we were looking at their pictures from September 2012, but it happened. We check in on a quasi-friend, acquaintance, high school rival, ex-girlfriend, maybe-future boyfriend, current co-worker, former co-worker, possible employee, whoever, and as we are flipping through their Instagram pictures, our finger slips and we hit “like.”