Why is the network ＂social cow＂ and the reality ＂social fear＂ so？

Some young people laugh at the network "social cattle" and the reality "social fear". Why is there such social duality?

In the digital living space, what kind of alienation has taken place between social rules and communication logic?

How is it related to the development process and methods of contemporary youth’s social competence?

How should the government, society and enterprises form a joint force to resolve the potential risks of cognitive narrowing, polarization, weakening of thinking ability and social attributes brought by information narrowing among young people?

Today, with the rapid development of information technology, some young people are in a dual state of network "social cattle" and reality "social fear". Their offline social will is weakened, their social ability is degraded, and they will feel nervous, stressed and uncomfortable in face-to-face social interaction, resulting in social anxiety; In the online world, these "social fear" youths show the state of "social cattle" and can quickly become one with strangers.

Why is there such social duality? What kind of alienation has taken place between social rules and communication logic in the digital living space? How is it related to the development process and way of contemporary youth’s social ability? How should the government, society and enterprises form a joint force to resolve the potential risks such as cognitive narrowing, polarization, weakening of thinking ability and social attributes caused by information narrowing among young people?

Two-faced youth indulge in network socialization

A number of interviewed experts said that the two-sided social status of some young people is closely related to the characteristics of the online world, such as "people are bright and I am dark" and "partial eclipse" of information.

On the one hand, network socialization is different from the concealment of real socialization, which will bring people a certain sense of security and easily become a "social cow" in cyberspace.

According to Zong Chunshan, director of the Beijing Youth Legal and Psychological Counseling Service Center, the essence of "social fear" is to care too much about the evaluation of others. In the past, in family education and school education, external evaluation was often overemphasized, which led some children to rely too much on external factors and ignore the value and significance of self-evaluation when establishing self-awareness. At the same time, some compulsory and mandatory education methods will also discourage children from actively expressing themselves.

However, the Internet is anonymous, and online social interaction shows the characteristics of "people are clear and I am dark". It is easy for people to form a social security distance, which is helpful for young people to gain a sense of security and break through psychological barriers.

On the other hand, after obtaining a large amount of network information, it is easy to form an "information cocoon room". In particular, the "cocoon room" of useless information and bad information will make some young people indulge in it, and then they will be unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the real society that is inconsistent with the rules and standards of cyberspace, and become "social fear."

Information cocoon room is a concept put forward by American scholar Keith Sunstein in 2006, which means that if you only pay attention to your chosen field, a certain information source or something that makes you happy, you will "shape yourself" in the long run and close yourself in the narrow information space of your own choice like a silkworm.

In a survey report based on 1341 college students, about 53.1% of the respondents felt that their information horizons were limited, but only 19.5% of the respondents would actively search for information in other fields after being limited, and 46.9% of the respondents were willing to accept algorithm push and only focused on their own areas of interest.

This means that the "information cocoon room" is the result of personal subjective choice to some extent.

Huang Haiyan, an associate professor at the School of Humanities, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, said that some young people tend to receive online information according to their personal preferences, which leads to "partial eclipse" of information, and the "three views" displayed in the online world are likely to split or contradict the "three views" practiced in real work and life. Because it is difficult to switch cognitive modes quickly and smoothly, some young people who are used to digital survival often choose to reduce their social frequency in the real world, or even become "socially fearful" youth. More seriously, they may be divorced from the real world and indulge in the "comfort zone" of the network, deepening the "two-sidedness" of social interaction.

In addition, due to the educational environment, growth experience, social space and other reasons, if teenagers fail to establish good real social habits from an early age, they will easily show fear of difficulties in real communication and turn to cyberspace for approval.

Network socialization will form a kind of presence feeling similar to collective consciousness through common focus and shared emotional state. For those who are insecure and eager for intimacy, it is not only a catharsis and compensation to get rid of the real social dilemma, but also a strong emotional experience and emotional stimulation.

Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences, said that increasing the frequency of social interaction is the basis for learning to establish meaningful relationships with others. Real social behaviors, such as sports and collective labor, are more closely linked and powerful than online social activities.

"Weak communication" or cognitive, thinking and social "constraints"

It is worthy of attention that some teenagers are easily caught up in online social interaction. Experts believe that it reflects that the logic of information dissemination in the Internet age has quietly changed.

Huang Chuxin, deputy director and secretary general of the New Media Research Center of China Academy of Social Sciences, said that based on the media ecology in the digital age, the "one-to-many" communication logic of mass communication in the traditional era has changed, and now the communication ecology is more "one-to-one" and "many-to-one". In the era of "everyone is media", communication logic pays more attention to verticalization, personalization and immersion.

Some scholars believe that the change of information communication logic will produce a phenomenon of "weak communication", that is, the strength of the public opinion world is inverted from the strength of the real world-the strong in reality is precisely the weak in the public opinion field, and the weak in reality is more likely to become the strong in the public opinion field.

Experts believe that some young people are bound by cocoon houses in virtual and real social interaction, digital social interaction and anthropomorphic social interaction, and rely too much on the network environment, so it is difficult to distinguish the boundary between the real world and the network world. Over time, it may affect their three "constraints" of cognition, thinking and social interaction, and affect their establishment of a comprehensive and rational cognition of the objective world.

One-sided information infiltration, cognitive constraints. Chen Zhiqiang, dean of the School of Culture and Communication, Zhejiang Wanli University, believes that the accumulation of information recommended by intelligent algorithms may lead to the narrowing or even polarization of some young people’s horizons, and the repeated acceptance of the same or similar views will easily lead to cognitive prejudice.

In addition, the infiltration of fragmented information constantly stimulates the audio-visual senses, and it is easy for some young people to reduce their concentration; Even learning information will affect the establishment of the overall knowledge structure because of the scattered information.

Indulge in homogeneous information, thinking is constrained. In cyberspace, people gather together based on ideas, opinions and tastes, accompanied by a lot of homogeneous content. Immersed in it for a long time, it is easy to strengthen self-repetition and self-cognition, and weaken the tolerance of heterogeneous content.

Qiu Ling, deputy secretary of the Jiangxi Provincial Committee of the Communist Youth League, said that it is more common for young people with weak self-discipline to "brush their mobile phones". The algorithm pays more and more attention to cater to the needs of the audience, and pushes the content in some fields at high frequency, among which the entertainment content is mostly. Over time, its thinking ability may be limited.

Social attributes are weakened and social constraints are imposed. Yang Fengchi, a professor of psychology at Capital Medical University, said that the virtual world on the Internet can’t replace real life, and 80% of people’s communication depends on nonverbal information, while social networking will affect and constrain real communication, and the communication resources on the Internet can’t be realized in most cases, making it difficult to form real interpersonal competitiveness.

On the other hand, people often selectively present a "net self" different from their true selves, which will make the interaction between people lose its authenticity and reduce the human factors in communication.

Better "together" with others

Behind some teenagers’ excessive dependence on network socialization, it reflects the dislocation of education in social development.

Many interviewed experts said that compared with the long-term smoking in the online world, some teenagers’ education in the real world is not complete enough. Whether in school or at home, education is more about imparting knowledge. In many cases, academic performance has become the main yardstick to measure whether children are excellent or not. Teenagers don’t have enough time to play and play with their peers, and the cultivation of social skills is naturally acquired through close competition and cooperation with their peers.

Chu Zhaohui said that social interaction is human nature, and social skills do not need training. Children naturally have the instinct to communicate with others from birth. As long as they seize the sensitive period of social interaction, create opportunities for children to communicate with each other in a timely manner, increase the frequency of social interaction, and deepen the experience of social interaction in the process of growing up, children can gradually learn how to contact, get along with, blend and live with others.

If parents neglect that children should always be in contact with others and nature, it is easy to miss the sensitive period of developing social communication ability. Even if they study and train passively in the future, it is difficult to make up for the lack of social atmosphere in childhood.

Chu Zhaohui said that there are too few opportunities for "double-faced" youth to get in touch with society, understand social operation rules and social needs, and there is a gap between them and social needs, which may affect their integration into society in the long run.

The experts interviewed reminded that the real purpose of parenting is to prepare children for the life of adults. This preparation must be all-round.

Experts suggest that children should get out of the textbook knowledge of simple learning and "no growth", re-examine themselves, find their own advantages and potentials, define their own positioning, think more detached about careers, majors and ambitions, and examine society and the world with a broader vision.

In other words, the phenomenon of "double-faced" youth reminds us that what we really need to be wary of is not young people’s online social interaction, but how to make young people know themselves better, know the world better, "be together" with others, and better find a suitable position for themselves in the long-term development of society.

Published in Outlook, No.22, 2022