Norm Breaching (blog post 10)
The experiment I chose to partake in was “The Oversharer.” Here are the outlines of this experiment: Pick either an acquaintance you don’t know that well or a parent. In a 24-hour period dramatically increase the amount of information you send this person using a text-based mobile communication technology that you know they can receive (like IM on your phone, text/SMS, or e-mail on your phone/PDA). For example, you could communicate with them every time you do anything (“hi I am getting on the bus”, “arrived in class,” “class is boring,” “having lunch,” “talking with friend.”) Describe the reactions.
I ultimately decided to do this challenge over the others listed, because I oddly enough already sort of do this with my boyfriend. We do medium/long distance (2 hours apart) and so we communicate over the phone, primarily through phone calls and Facetime, but during the day we text back and forth more. We both know each other’s schedules, quite well, but still find comfort in letting the other person know what we are up to and, in a weird way, feel like we are bringing the other person along with us. So, since I could not do this with him, I chose to do this experiment with my mom. I started this morning, April 9th, when I woke up and texted her things like “headed over to give my tour” “going to DTJ with Briah and Lillian!” “Just got back and got a good parking spot 🔥” “out of meeting, lunchtime now” “time for class, ugh” and so on. She liked or heart-reacted to all of these messages, responding to some but not all. She is an elementary school teacher so she does not get a lot of free time, but she has an Apple watch, so she was still able to see my updates and react timely. I also included pictures of my coffee, my outfit, my kitty, etc in my updates.
She and I are very, very close, and while we don’t communicate step by step every day sending updates and texts that don’t require an immediate response is a fairly normal thing for us to do.
After telling her that night that I was texting her so much, throughout the day because of this little social experiment, she didn’t come out and say that she thought my behavior was weird or that she was annoyed by this (which I thought she might), but rather that she thought I was bored or wondered if I was like skipping out on a class. I was obviously glad to hear that she was not bothered by my absurd amount of unnecessary text updates.
In connection with my experience with Baym and his book Personal Connections In The Digital Age, I took away the ideas of perspective, conformity, and adaptation. From my mother’s perspective, I was oversharing or maybe had too much time on my hands, and from my perspective, I was afraid that maybe I was bothering her, but I knew that this was something I had to do for school. With the idea of conformity, and also with this being a more short-term experiment, I don’t fully think that there was much conformity, but towards the end of the day my mom had started to send messages like “just left school,” “home with Tarzan (our cat's name), accompanied with a picture of him, and “here’s what’s for dinner.” While these are just a few, short messages, she did sort of fall into the norm that I was setting for our text communication style.
Through what I have learned in this class, as well as my previous communications classes, and then combined with my application and real-world practice with this concept, I was really able to see and realize that we create norms, and with that power, we have to ability to change, adapt, and also get rid of social and communicational norms, that have been set prior. For my case, specifically, I think that texting applications are open for interpretation as everyone has different text habits, slang terms, and norms set from person to person. I would not text my boyfriend in the same tone or manner as I would text my parents, as I would text my boss. I feel like this is something that is understood across the board, too.
