Self-Disclosure: Online v. Face-to-Face, Loved Ones v. Strangers

The purpose of this research to investigate how much a person shares personal details about himself to a family member and/or friend compared to a stranger. It is also to investigate how much of that self-disclosure is done face-to-face compared to online communication. The children who grew up along with the Internet remember being told, “Don’t talk to strangers on the internet.” Now, those same children and their parents believe everything that is being put up on the Internet to the point that they feel comfortable enough to put personal details about their lives out there to the strangers. The information found online can be recorded and found anywhere. This is in lieu of telling those personal details to other family members or close friends. The hope for this investigation is to figure out how much more personal information is disclosed online than face-to-face. This presentation will explain my findings after data has been collected from an anonymous online survey