Social Media Norm Breaching Experiment

When Dr. Song passed out the handout on breaching social media norms, I read it and laughed out loud. These were funny because they were so ridiculous and out of line to do. But then when I realized I had to participate in two of them as part of class and document my experience, I froze. Basically, I was, and still am, scared of breaking social norms. I was scared that others would think I was crazy. I was scared that this would be their perception of me from here on out. I was scared that because of this, they wouldn’t want to be associated with me. (I am also an irrational worrier, so there’s that) But since this was for a class, I decided to go through with them.

To start off my experiment, I went with a version of the “snapchat stalker.” Basically, what I did was go through people’s snapchat stories and screenshot them. I intentionally picked people from three different groups: my very close friends, regular friends that I see on occasion but don’t hang out with often, and just acquaintances. I was really nervous about taking the screenshots, especially with the “acquaintances” group because I did not know how they would react and because I did not want them to think I was a creep and ruin our chances at becoming better friends. However, the responses were pretty underwhelming.

No one seemed to care too much that I was taking screenshots, or at least, their concerns were not vocalized as much as I thought they would be. The only response I personally got was from someone in my “very close friends” group who snapchatted me: “yo why did you screenshot.” I did not get responses from anyone else.

I know that whenever someone screenshots my snapchat story, I automatically think “This is weird. Why are they doing this,” but I too will not confront them because that seems pretty aggressive. But what I will do is have an in-depth discussion with my roommates or close friends on reasons they may have screenshotted, especially if it was done by someone I am not close to. So despite the lack of responses from people, I have reason to believe that they probably thought it was strange that I was screenshotting their stories, but not strange enough to the point that they felt uncomfortable and had to confront me about my actions.

This coming week, I’ll do my second social media norm breaching experiment. I plan on doing something more daring than this one, although I am not sure which one that will be.