A Place for Connecting and Disclosing

As Ben was playing his XBOX one night during the summer of his senior year of high school going into college, his Mom came in to give him a letter that he had received in the mail from Lasher State which was the school that he had been accepted to and was going to attend in the Fall. The letter was about who the University had chosen to be Ben’s new roommate. Ben was surprised that the letter had come so soon because he had only filled out the roommate preference sheet a couple weeks prior. As his Mom left the room and his eyes still fixed on the game, he decided to look up his new roommate on facebook to see what kind of person he was and to contact him during the summer to hang out before they moved in together. When he got to his facebook page Ben realized that he had a new email saying that David Bradford had added him as a friend on facebook. This name was the same name from the letter that he had got from Lasher State about his new roommate. Ben was hesitant to accept the friend request because he felt as if this person was a stranger still. He accepted the request to look at his new roommates page, as he looked he noticed he was in football, had many many friends, had a lot of girls that commented his page, and looked like he liked to drink and party. Ben thought to himself that the University must have messed up and given him the wrong person or last person because by the looks of his profile on facebook, David seemed like grades were not at the top of his priority list and Ben specifically asked for someone like him that would have grades being important. Ben also then looked at his own facebook page and decided that his was not up to date and that he probably looked like a nerd from some of the things he put for interests.

As the two boys moved into together to their new dorm room for their first year of college, they meet their roommates that were staying across the hall, two girls that were best friends since high school named Allison and Chloe. The four students became really good friends as the semester went on until one day when Chloe started noticing that Allison wasn’t hanging out as much with her anymore and was leaving the room before Chloe woke up.  When Dave and Ben asked Chloe where Allison had been and why they had not seen her lately, Chloe told them that she thought something was different with her friend. Dave then went on facebook and saw that Allison had posted on her facebook that she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Dave had Ben read it and then Chloe. Chloe was upset and felt like her best friend should have told her about problem before displaying for everyone to see. As Chloe was explaining how she felt, Allison walked through the door.  

The key terms in this case are self-disclosure, social connection, warranting and facebook.  In this case, we can apply permeability which is how freely people allow others to share information they disclosed about themselves. Allison used this by sharing her information about herself on facebook first. She also applied ownership by controlling who had access to her posting on facebook. The people on facebook that were able to read her posts also became boundary insiders because they got to view Allison’s information and be involved if they wanted to by posting a comment back to her about the information she displayed about herself. Chloe was hurt because she felt that Allison should have came to her and disclosed that information to her best friend first and not facebook.  Also in Allison’s case she applied topic avoidance by not bringing this new information to Chloe and secret keeping by not saying anything to Chloe for weeks as Chloe noticed a big change in her friends actions. This case is very similiar to a situation that happened within my group of friends and disclosing information on facebook. I feel it is very easy to relate to because it seems as if facebook is the place to air all your dirty laundry at one time to everyone.