Self-Disclosure on Social Networking Sites: How far do we disclose?

Self-disclosure is the process of deliberately revealing significant information about oneself that would not normally be known to others. When one sense that the other person can be trusted with their information and engages in exchange of information, the more the person tends to share personal information, opinions, feelings, fears, as well as likes and dislikes and their deepest secrets despite the risks involved. The outcome may be positive which leads to progresses in the relationship or negative, which ends there and then.

On the other hand, Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter is a medium that allows people to connect with one another online. Most commonly with friends and family members, both near and far, acquaintances, sometimes strangers and even people that we barely know.

Regardless, the emergence of social networking sites has brought on an alteration to ways one self-disclose from “one-to-one” to “one-to-many”. “One-to-one” refers to offline communication that usually involves two people. Looking at social penetration theory, it takes place in stages, beginning with shallow and slowly evolving to deep levels and the more one reveals about themselves, the more closer the relationship becomes. Whereas, on Social networking sites it does not necessarily takes place as such, instead there is no reciprocity as to when talking face-to-face, in an offline setting.

Little do we know, that our frequent usage of social media we disclose a little something about ourselves. We may not realize this, but upon registering to join the social media sites as mentioned above, we reveal personal information such as our name, birthday, school, job, and the list goes on. Adding to that, Instagram has a feature known as the description box where the user is able to write anything they wish and as what I have observed, many people voluntarily give out their details for instance their hobbies, parentage, age and etc.

Apart from that, features such as status update, story update on Facebook and Instagram, captions, reveals a lot about a person. Over time, the audiences especially strangers, acquaintances and people that we rarely and never talk to knows something and details about us that not many people know (only our closes friends and families). It is common that people update their stories with activities that they do, food they are eating, places they are visiting, people they are with, but do we realise that we are actually feeding others with information that we most probably will never give when we talk face-to face? 

Despite the fact that we share most of our lives online, our problems, weakness, strength, opinions, I wonder, will we be able to reach to the point whereby we disclose our core and very personal information (secrets) online? The secrets that we will only share with the person or people that we trust? In my opinion, I would never be able to do such thing as it involves a great risk to myself, but I believe this question is subjective and there is no definite answer. What do you think? How far would you disclose?