Experimenting with Social Norms
There are a lot of unwritten “rules” of using digital media these days that people follow without having to be told to do so; its just a “thing” you do. For example, people don’t typically post more than once on Instagram because its considered a social faux-pas. Once before I’ve been given the task of breaking social norms, but they had to be person-to-person interactions — for that assignment I chose to call people by their prefix (Mr., Mrs., or Miss) and their last name to test out reactions. That was very uncomfortable, similar to this experiment. This week I tested out some of the unsaid social norms people follow using technology to see what the reactions would be when I broke the rules. As I expected, things got awkward, but not nearly as bad as the reactions would have been if we had tested in-person social norms.
I experimented with the rules of texting using Facebook Messenger to help test the rules. When someone would text me a question or a statement, I would respond to them through Messenger. The first few times, the recipient didn’t notice or react to my use of Messenger, they simply responded back through a text message. However, after a few messages, the recipient usually converted to the same medium I was using. From there, the natural reaction of confusion and annoyance came about, questioning why I was using Messenger to communicate.
I was asked if there was something wrong with my texts because it is so abnormal to respond to someone using a different source. Clearly the only reason that anyone should switch sources of communication is in dire circumstances when one medium no longer functions properly. Annoyance was also a major factor because people didn’t appreciate having the same conversation over two different mediums. The inconvenience of switching from one app to another is the reason why the social norm of staying on one source was “created”. These social norms are so ingrained in people that within a minute, each person I was conversing with noticed the change and asked if there was a problem. Even though the base of these two apps are messaging with other people, the idea of using a different source that is not a main texting app is “weird” and “shouldn’t be done”.
However, I also find it interesting that in multiple cases, the recipient of my messages changed over to my source of communicating within seconds of the change. Even though switching to Messenger as a means of communications was “wrong”, people followed me anyways. This could be a commentary on how fast social media causes change and how quick we are to follow new ideas. Maybe we should stop and think about how we communicate with others before we try something new. Depending on the new trend that comes out, it could be really risky to change over to something new if we don’t fully know what this change is.
Overall, from this experiment I learned that it is easier to break social norms through digital media rather than in person, but the effects are the same: both are uncomfortable. Social norms are essentially unwritten codes of conduct that we all follow as a learned instinct and to go against those ideas is abnormal. Rules are set in place for a reason; breaking them causes consequences. However, with this experiment, the awkwardness that ensued was not nearly as potent as when I did my person-to-person experiment. I think this goes to show how new technology still is in our society — the social norms haven’t had enough time to ferment because technology is still evolving. People have been around a lot longer to establish societal norms, but technology hasn’t thus the rules are still “flexible”. Only time will tell which social norms stay and which ones go.
