To a small extent, maybe (but mostly I disagree). When you’re online (or sitting in your car) you’re not seeing the face of the person you’re talking to on the phone, so the behavioral cues I mentioned in an earlier reply would likewise be absent and so I would expect more conflict to stem from or be exacerbated by phone calls than face-to-face communication. BUT, we’re much less likely to encounter random jackasses on our phone than online since most of the anonymity that seems to empower the trollish types or bullies is absent when someone has to actually call us on our phone.

 The degree of “presence” seems to be a major factor that determines the nature of the interaction; face-to-face has the highest presence and so allows/promotes the most productive and civilized communication. Video conferencing would probably be one notch lower on that scale, followed by telephone calls, email, social networking, and finally random blog commenting (where the trolls are most common).

Oddly enough, hand-written letters would seem on the surface to be an even more abstract form of communication than the internet and should therefore be one of the nastiest/least compassionate forms of communication, but I suppose the fact that a letter takes so much actual effort to compose and time spent focusing on the person one is writing to that “haters” simply lack that kind of motivation or patience (that and it costs actual money to send!).

Road rage doesn’t happen to pedestrians. Sure, pedestrians will get into conflicts and fights and such but they are much rarer and of a different character than the kinds of conflicts that commonly erupt between normally-civilized car drivers. Someone in a car who cuts in front of another driver and forces them to hit the brakes can elicit a torrent of obscenities and gestures and even the use of firearms, but if pedestrians bump into each other while crossing the street, the individuals involved make a slight correction to their course and carry on without any screaming fits or outbreaks of violence (in the vast majority of cases).

The difference seems to be that pedestrians see each other face to face whereas car drivers are sealed in little boxes (much like how people sit in their house while browsing social networks). Since so much human interaction involves subtle behavioral cues that in many cases are perceived subconsciously, pedestrians are able to express a non-aggressive, apologetic attitude about accidentally bumping into someone and can detect the same being expressed towards them by the other party with a half-second glance at each others’ faces.

While driving in our cars or at home sitting at our computers we lack this complex and highly-evolved way of assessing the intent of those we suddenly find ourselves in conflict with; was their cutting me off an unintended accident or were they intentionally trying to start trouble? With no face to explore for more data, our default response seems to be to assume the worst and respond accordingly. That may have been a reasonable survival strategy at an earlier stage of human evolution, but it’s really starting to become a problem now.

So, I guess I’d say that social networking site users are as compassionate as any random group of individuals, but only when they encounter other people face to face. When they’re online or get into their car, all bets about compassion are off.

To say that it is just psuedo-intellectual misdirection means to me that the question in question – Are Social Networking Site Users Compassionate – is somehow an improper framework.  I grok that you’re seeing this as something similar to asking, “Are All Internet Users Pimply Sexless Psychopaths?”  But I don’t believe it’s as insulting as that, or at all playing those off old, tired stereotypes of lack of “real” interaction versus online interaction breeding a lack of empathy.

The data is presented as a report on self-reporting.  You’re right to say it in no way substantiates anything and that it’s a silly piece of data  — And I just realized you were never saying what I thought you were.  Misread a few words there, my apologies.

I don’t think a good conversation can develop from such a poor beginning because too many of the fundamental issues have been mangled and misrepresented through the misuse of the graphs and referenced data. There is no pretty baby here – just psuedo-intellectual misdirection that serves no one and poisons the very discussion (that adorable baby) you seem to hold so dearly. It’s an acid bath.

There’s also the very Glenn Beck style of interrogative that asks something like, “Are teh geyz actually Hitler’s lovechildren, out to give you ebola and bladder cancer, before kidnapping your firstborn child?”  Followed by something like, “I’m not insinuating anything — I’m just asking a question!”

Yeah, poorly answered interrogatives are usually such a classy tactic.

So of course you’re going to see more negative social outcomes and cruelty if you actually are social with a large group of people than if you sit at home watching television alone and only interact with one or two extremely close friends.

And then consider how tightly regimented all our other social contact is. In school and work, we’re forced to present an artificial version of ourselves and hide our emotions so we can impress teachers and employers who have power over our futures. So if someone pisses us off at work, we smile and act like it’s nothing, then vent online and end the friendship there, where there are fewer external consequences. 80 years ago we would have waited and done it at the church picnic. 40 years ago we wouldn’t have been friends with that person outside of work anyway.

Seriously, I think we need to just ban anyone over the age of 30 from publishing “research” on modern social technology. ESPECIALLY boomers, who lacked even the flesh-and-blood interactions to compare it to. To understand the role of technology in the lives of people born after it’s inception, you have to actually live in that world. To me, as a person who lived her whole life in a world where the internet is the major means of social contact, reading this stuff feels a lot like how, say, Amazonians who haven’t been significantly impacted by Europeans describe their reactions to anthropology papers on their communities. 

As for where the value might be, a loosely framed question allows for more discussion, more personal anecdotes, and in general, just More. 

If I were looking for academic rigor or a more scientific conclusion, I would consult an actual peer reviewed sociological journal.  At that point, there is actually an argument made, and one can then agree or disagree.  For my part, I come here for its explorations, its levity and its archive of current examples of conflicted identity and contested cultural norms – pics of overly gendered greeting cards or other contemporary advertisement rhetoric for example.  Again, I completely understand wanting a more narrow frame and a more precise interpretation of this or that piece of data, but no one is stopping you from offering something along those lines. 

So, I concur about the bathwater, but don’t you see that adorable baby there?

http://goo.gl/Hx8vL