Oversharing could possibly lead to data breaches and identity theft, which means people are often their own worst enemy when it comes to network security.

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The popularization of the Internet and the development of network information technology have provided online platforms for social life, driving the explosive growth of social network sites. Online social networks have become an increasingly important channel through which people stay in touch and maintain relationships. They share information, express themselves online, and adopt split personas.

The interrelation between technology and society makes it possible for people to communicate with each other anywhere and at any time, and oversharing has become increasingly common as people feel less inhibited about divulging the intimate details of their lives to strangers.

 

Peep culture
Despite their internal cultural differences, all kinds of social networks allow users to be transparent or semitransparent in the online world by sharing text, pictures or videos with other users through Web applications and links. The behavior of oversharing is thus shaped and reinforced when information technology interacts with social psychology.

However, what lurks behind oversharing is the fact that the private lives of individuals have become products that can be observed and consumed. The blurring of the boundary between public and private life as well as increasingly frequent social interaction encourages individuals to become careless about personal privacy.

In a world where people constantly post new information, update their own statuses, and share their own mood, behavior and location on the Web, the panoramic view of society is turning increasingly transparent in all dimensions. People are not only the disseminators of information but also virtual voyeurs.

And this synchronous pattern of information production and voyeurism fosters the invention of a new form of network culture—peep culture.

Hal Niedzviecki, the Canadian cultural critic and novelist, summarizes the essence of peep culture as the act of excessive self-exposure, which unconsciously pulls one from the private corner of self to the sphere of public consumerism. Without guarding against the external environment, the masses disclose personal information at a high frequency, usually, but not always, for the purpose of recreation. But the enjoyment gained in the act comes at the expense of privacy.

Encouraged by the platform of social networks, online sharing has surged. In December 2008, Webster’s New World Dictionary listed the word “oversharing” as the Word of the Year. While encouraging users to establish ties with others through information sharing, the boom of social networking sites makes open network data a free gift to each user.

 

Fuzzy identity
In a traditional agricultural and industrial society in which social mobility is relatively low, the individual is part of a complex network of social relations. Being a member of a certain group or organization, the individual exists in his or her stable circle of social relations, the essence of which is a type of moral relations and individual behaviors molded and guided by inherent informal norms and values.

Families, communities, religious groups and other collective organizations play certain roles in standardizing individual behaviors and attempt to make personal conduct conform to the group code through collective practice. In such a social context, each individual assumes explicit social role and is endowed with predictable social expectations. Social norms and customs can be gradually acquired by individual members through the process of socialization.

That is to say, prior to the information age, the individual act of sharing was performed within the framework of homogeneous moral culture. Local consensus was a set of common rules binding people’s daily behaviors and providing the social basis on which the community members communicated and interacted with each other. Explicit social roles mean that one’s personal value is affiliated with the group, and the public will is the staring point from which an individual shares information. In other words, personal information sharing constitutes the public moral order which, in turn, is used as the criterion to judge one’s social behavior. In such circumstances, information sharing has been consciously limited within the framework of group ethics to conform to the value orientation of the group.

The advent of social networking, to a large extent, has changed the social structure of information sharing. The individual has begun to break away from the constraints of the collective organization as well as the moral norms and fetters of group rules and regulation.

In the information era, which flaunts the exercise of individuality, one’s social role and identity becomes fuzzy, and social expectation is no longer what specifies and confines the individual behavior. The real-time transmission of text information, the loss of social feedback and the anonymity of social background data facilitate the task-oriented means of communication instead of emotion-oriented means of communication. What prevails is the strong urge to self-record and unprecedented acceptance of self-surveillance.

The group standards and the restrictions on personal information sharing have been weakened in the world of social networking, where moral unanimity is lost and the information power is bottom-up designed. This, on the other hand, means the decline of one’s opportunities to be recognized by the external society and stirs the hankering for attention to one’s existence. As a result, oversharing and excessive self-exposure have become the means of gaining social recognition. To establish and refine one’s social identity and public image in the course of socialization, the individual continues to send out signals about “who I am.”

 

Dunbar number
Our urge to voluntarily give up privacy can be also explained from the perspective of the famous Dunbar number that measures the cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which individuals know who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.

British evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorized that there is a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain only 150 stable relationships. Dunbar explained it informally as “the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar.” Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. The unit cohesion and morale within a group of 150 people improves each member’s sense of belonging and psychological security.

In a highly structured organization with close affinity among members, the individual shares information with others mostly face to face and through gossip. In the social brain theory’s broad definition, gossip means any conversation about social relationships.

In its earlier forms, gossip contained information that is critical to the group’s benefit, serving as an instrument of social order and cohesion. Reliable oral language, strict behavioral codes, and the internal affinity make the chatter a necessary way to hold together a diverse group. Therefore, in traditional agricultural and industrial society, it was the gossip-style information sharing that helped form partnerships and alliances as well as cement bonds within a group.

Turning our eyes back to the online social networks, where the authority of large organizations is reduced, and individuality is highly prized, the Dunbar number and the case of gossip-style communication are also applicable. A small clan that consists of about 150 like-minded people who share common personal preferences can much more easily be recognized by individuals. Technologically supported by information technology revolution, such small social groups based on people’s common interest, similar hobbies, transcends the kinship, geographical limitations and thus displays full vigor and dynamics. To distinguish oneself with the anonymity of the public and to extricate themselves from the mundane daily life, individuals seek to manifest their own uniqueness through voluntary self-surveillance, which no longer means public order but a strategy to gain group identity.

We are eager to receive the acceptance of the group but reluctant to be hindered by its intrinsic structure—this seems to be the riddle of modern society. As Dunbar points out, “We are Paleolithic hunters and gatherers trapped in the politics and economy of the 20th century.” Living in an increasingly individualized and networked society, we continue to look for self-identity while at the same time learning to solve the 21st century puzzle—a type of living where great information mobility and personal autonomy coexist.

 

Wang Yixuan is from the Center for Studies of Sociological Theory & Method at Renmin University of China.