Online Disinhibition Effect - General Concept

General Concept

Because of this loss of inhibition, some users may exhibit benign tendencies such as: becoming more affectionate, more willing to open up to others, less guarded about emotions, all in an attempt to achieve emotional catharsis. According to psychologist John Suler, this particular occurrence is called benign disinhibition.

With respect to bad behavior, users on the Internet can frequently do or say as they wish without fear of any kind of meaningful reprisal. In most Internet forums, the worst kind of punishment one can receive for bad behavior is usually being banned from a particular site. In practice, however, this serves little use; the person involved can usually circumvent the ban by simply registering another username and continuing the same behavior as before. Suler calls this toxic disinhibition.

CB radio during the 1970s saw similar bad behavior:

Most of what you hear on CB radio is either tedious (truck drivers warning one another about speed traps) or banal (schoolgirls exchanging notes on homework), but at its occasional—and illegal—worst it sinks a pipeline to the depths of the American unconscious. Your ears are assaulted by the sound of racism at its most rampant, and by masturbation fantasies that are the aural equivalent of rape. The sleep of reason, to quote Goya’s phrase, brings forth monsters, and the anonymity of CB encourages the monsters to emerge.

Suler names six primary factors behind why people sometimes act radically different on the internet than when they do in normal face-to-face situations: