Abstract 

In my essay I took the approach of studying the relationship between the role of online communication and its involvement in social anxiety. In order to answer the research question, I took an observation over three different categories. In these observations I took the approach of conducting surveys, observation over media apps, and comparing my analysis towards other scholarly journals. The three different categories I observed were discord and how it helps individuals connect with others. The second category I have chosen was gaming interactions and its involvement in interaction and encouragement in social activity. Finally, my last observation was with social media interactions more specially an article, as I saw it had the greatest involvement in connecting others, and communities together. In my finding of each observation, I have found one similar commonality. The commonality being the ability to be more open with others across the web knowing that they can’t be judged on appearance, as well as first person impression not being needed as much. Another important influencer I saw was that individuals were more open to communicate with others when they have found something in common, they can talk about. These two important factors have allowed individuals to shed away from anxiety and be more open towards interacting with others.

Online influence of health and anxiety

What’s the first thing you think about, online or technology influence in online communicating? Very often the first thing many people think of, is how online communications brings its negative influence. e. Many of their claims may be about either online predator enouncements, how online communications can bring down the aspect of face-to-face interaction, and loss of language meaning. Although many people may claim that it brings it negative influence, I’m here to represent how online interactions can in fact bring its positive impact towards helping people interact with others. Through my essay I’ll be discussing how online communication has a positive correlation with anxiety. The research question I’ll be examining is how well being improved and anxiety decreased because of online interactions and togetherness. I’ll be looking at multiple variables and factors and how they play a role. That includes Chatting with others on discussion boards (on discord), Gaming with others (MPG) -play as stress reliever and social interactivity of modern digital gaming, Activism, learning from others/Sharing with others. In order to achieve these goals, I’ll be conducting observations, surveys, and outside sources.

Before we get into the data, we first must understand anxiety and how it plays a role in everyday life. According to the article “Social Anxiety” by Mark.R. Leary. and Robin. M. Kowalski. They studied the meaning of anxiety and where it can root from. In their essay they distinguished social anxiety from anxiety rising from nonsocial. In their work we can see that there are many forms of social anxiety, as well as many definitions, but for the purpose of this essay we will focus on the aspect of social anxiety. The authors noted that social anxiety derives from many forms such as, confidences, communications skills, appearance, and fears. From their research we can formulate that social anxiety is cognitive behavior that involves an experience of anxiety that has emotional discomfort, fear, apprehension or worry, regarding social situations and being evaluated by other people. It occurs early in childhood as a normal part of social functioning. People vary in how often they experience social anxiety or in which kinds of situations. With the authors given research from the past, I hope I can take one step further and evaluate social anxiety in everyday life through online communication in the present world.

Discords Impactions

As mentioned before, one of the biggest contributors of social anxiety is the fear of appearance or the fear of judgement they may receive from others, due to their looks, personality, style or behavior. When it comes to finding the best ways to avoid this anxiety, one of the most popular ways I have found was through online communication. Through online communications people are able to communicate with others through apps such as social media, games, or discord. For this research section I’ll be specifically focusing on the app discord (Image on the right) and how it has helped many people connect with others online. As I mentioned many people fear judgement from others, but from the app discord, it allows people to join certain categories that best fit their interest. Through these categories it allows people to meet others who share the same interest as they do. Through my research I conducted an experiment that observed the discord channels. In order to obtain my observation, I would observe multiple different servers. Serving includes education, gaming, entertainment, etc. In order to obtain the information, observe discord and the communities, on a daily basis for a week straight. I’ll be breaking down a discord category and way’s it has helped with anxiety or communication.

I’ll be discussing education as an example as it has been most prominently seen to help people with anxiety. What I have found was that it was used in various ways. One of the most common ways I saw it being used was, connecting with other students, connecting with teachers, the aspect of wanting to learn more. There were multiple key aspects when correlating the common communication methods which was, the idea that people were able talk without the fear of judgement, and the ability to improve communication with others, and the ability to learn more without the hassle of in person interaction. In approach with student observation, I have found that individuals have found it less anxiety reducing and much easier when interacting online vs in person. The experience I have conducted was very similar to what Fonseca Cacho, J in his article called “Using Discord to Improve Student Communication, Engagement, and Performance”. Within his observation he has found that discord allows instructors and teaching assistants to interact and help a student at any time including outside of regular business hours with a student’s homework assignment. It also allows students to help each other while under the supervision of an instructor. As well as increasing engagement and fraternizing between everyone involved. Similar to his finding and mine, the commonality was that, going under school discord categories allows students to connect with others in many ways that may have not been available in the classroom, overall reducing the anxiety of judgement in classroom environment, but instead in a virtual classroom.

Another I have found to be interesting was the increase in discord chat rooms over the past years. The result of this was due to the covid-19 pandemic. As many were anxious about common to class during at times serious illness, discord allowed students to put their fear aside, as it offered many ways to communicate with staff, students, and teachers, upon how to go forward during the stay-at-home protocol. In this research I looked over the past years’ articles, and one correlation I have found was that each article has found that many students have adapted to using sites like discord with little trouble. An author named Di Marco, L… wrote a journal called. “User-centered evaluation of Discord in midwifery education during the COVID-19 pandemic: Analysis of the adaptation of the tool to student needs” In this article he researched how well students were able to adapt, and how communication was affected. What he found was that although discord was not the best for school activities, it has helped many students stay connected together. The author noted “Discord has the characteristics of a social network, allowing students to connect with each other.” (Pg.1 Marco). In conclusion he analysis has been supported by work, by concluding that apps like discord help stay engaged with others through online communication. The authors have also noted that discord has been mainly used to connect people together through gaming, which I’ll Segway into my next paragraph.

Social Anxiety and Gaming

With gaming it allows individuals to use a way to distract themselves from social anxiety is online gaming. In these experiments I’ll be studying how video games can play as a stress reliever and social interactivity of modern digital gaming. In order to examine this, I’ll be using multiple methods that will help convey individual experiences. Methods, including past research, surveys, and observation. To further progress the research, I focused on the concept of how massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are used by individuals to practice anxiety interaction. Conducting my first experience I created a survey asking friends I have met over the internet, who had suffered from social anxiety, and have used gaming as a way to practice interaction. In the given surveys I gave mainly yes, and no question, as well as few multiple-choice questions, overall, five questions, with a sample size of fifty people. Here’s a link to a sample of the survey. (Results are on the right). With these surveys I was able to determine how helpful online gaming really was.  With the surveys I was able to see that online did prove to be helpful for many people, in many different ways. One of the most common ways I saw was that it has helped reduce the fear of judgement. I was also to determine that judgement has played a significant factor when determining the reason on why people fear social interactions. Another thing that I stumbled upon was that, after interacting online with others, individuals have found it easier to interact in person, as gaming interaction was a sort of communication practice for many people. Also, key thing to point out was that people felt most safe interacting online when they were able to share something in common. These observations were very similar to what I found in my previous experience about social interaction in discord. What they both related to be that people found that they benefited the most when they can find others who share the most in common with them. Another important thing to note was that with no face-to-face interaction individuals felt the heavy weight of someone judging them based on their looks taken off their shoulders. With the survey I also conducted couple interviews with individuals who were willing to participate. With the interviews there was one underlying message that kept popping up. I went ahead rephrased to the best ability I can that best describes how the interviewees all related to one idea. That idea being “When in class or a meeting, many people will get the first impression of you best off your looks or style, or first encounter, and use that to judge you from here on now”. This idea has shown me how many people suffer with their anxiety from first impression anxiety. I also found a similar study on the internet upon first impression anxiety. Their article is called “Social anxiety and liking: Towards understanding the role of meta perceptions in first impressions.” written by a group of authors, their names are Tissera, H., Gazzard Kerr, L., Carlson, E. N., & Human, L. J. In the article their objective was to test how much anxiety people face upon first impression, in the dating world. What they found was that meta perceptions had a huge factor determining how individuals may experience anxiety. What does that mean? It means that people have a high worry upon how others think, especially on first impressions. I found this to be very similar to my research because it helps show how important other people’s judgments can play a significant role in one’s wellbeing. 

During the interview there was also another intervee who made a great point to me. With their permission I was able to share their quote as long as they kept their name private. Their quote includes “With online interaction I’m able to interact with users all over the internet with the ability to use gaming as a coping mechanism from my anxiety and use the online world as a safe place.”. I found these ideas to be quite interesting because through my observation, the given statement has best described the analysis I have gotten. In the article called. Social anxiety and Internet gaming disorder: The role of motives and metacognitions. Journal of Behavioral Addictions written by Marino, C., Canale, N., Vieno, A., Caselli, G., Scacchi, L., & Spada, M. M there essentially was about how gaming can help with social anxiety. What they found was that individuals used gaming as a coping mechanism toward social anxiety. Meaning that individuals found it best to communicate with others online rather than in real life. I found their analysis and data to be quite useful as it supports the idea of social anxiety creating a safe place for individuals over the internet. 

I also found these to be apparent in another article called Online Gaming Addiction: The Role of Sensation Seeking, Self-Control, Neuroticism, Aggression, State Anxiety, and Trait Anxiety by Mehwish Mehroof and Mark D. Griffith. In these articles they took the attempt to best understand the relationship between a number of personality traits (sensation seeking, self-control, aggression, neuroticism, state anxiety, and trait anxiety). What they found was that “individuals either experience generous anxiety or very little when playing video games.” (Pg. 5). I can match this with my results with the message being that when it comes to online gaming individuals tend to feel more safe and more interactive. With Online interaction there’s many observations or ideas individuals come up with. One of the most popular things I have found was how easy socializing gaming can be with connecting with others. With my segment I’ll be describing how the easy access of gaming can help individuals with social anxiety navigate with whom they want to talk to.

One final observation I noticed when collecting data upon gaming interactions was that many people assume that online social gaming can bring more harm than helpfulness, or it can be too much of a struggle to socialize online. While in some cases that may be true I have found that through my surveys, many individuals found that online gaming was easy to navigate and socialize with whom they wished. An article called In-game and Out-of-game Social Anxiety Influences Player Motivations, Activities, and Experiences in MMORPGs by Dechant, Poeller, S., Johanson, C., Wiley, K., & Mandryk, R, in their article they studied how anxiety plays a role in online gaming interaction. What they found was that their in-person anxiety was high, but their online gaming social anxiety was low. Connecting that back to my research question, on how online gaming can help with social anxiety, this article analysis helps provide the idea that individuals feel more comfortable to be open and interactive on online gaming. With these sections I hope I encourage the idea that online gaming can be useful for people who have social anxiety. Speaking of encouragement, my last and final topic will be about how social media can encourage many individuals to get more active in the real world.

Important of social media

In these experiments I used observation studying as well as past research done to help convey my research topic. My essential question here was how social media activism can help people engage with others online. In my observation I studied multiple media apps, including Instagram, Facebook, and twitter. I found two major commonalities within this research. The two being, encourages others to gain the confidence to communicate with others and confidence to attend rallies. Why are these so important? Gaining the ability to communicate with others socially can help one’s wellbeing, and the anxiety of being feared of being alone. The article called Introduction to social media, Activism, and Organizations by

Dhiraj Murthy took a very similar approach to what I have done. In their researched they gathered that social media is an prominent way for organization, individuals, or activist to find either find their voice, get out their comfort zone, or start a movement, but what stood out to me was the idea that social media was a place where individual can use method as a way to get out of their comfort zone and communicate with others. A way I found that to be prominent in observation was that, under many activist posts, I found users who commented about how other users, or creators have helped them become more involved in the community even though they experience social anxiety. Another source I found to be well adaptive to my research was The Structure of Online Activism by Kevin Lewis, Kurt Gray, Jens Meierhenrich, what they studied was the civic engagement over the internet. What they found that social media was a great gateway towards connecting communities, or individuals together. This helps prove my thesis because it helps show how social media can be used to connect people in various ways, even though they may experience in person anxiety, they still connect over the web. Another idea I want to note that I was able to observe was the discrimination and anxiety connection. With many discriminations being introduced, it creates anxiety for many individuals. In my observation I was able to study how discriminate comminuted can be brought together on social media. Within that I was able to see how many used to be afraid to attend rallies due to discrimination and fear, but with the encouragement of others, it helped relieve some of that anxiety, an article called Can Social Media News Encourage Activism? The Impact of Discrimination News Frames on College Students’ Activism Intentions my M. A Smith describes how social media has helped contribute to many college students who’ve been discriminated against and uses social media as a way to communicate with others. Very similar to my studies an article I found to be well supported is Political activism online: organization and media relations in the case of 15M in Spain by Josep-Lluís Micó &Andreu Casero-Ripollé. This article showed how people can connect with others and support individual to participate in activities, Overall, the correlation between the articles I found and the observation I have done, I have found that social media can be used a place for individuals who experience social anxiety, as a way to get involved or as a way to get encouragement to participate in events. These helps reconnect towards my research analysis by helping us understand that social media can influence individual that have social anxiety helpful them ge more encourage to be outgoing involved in various activities, knowing that there’s individuals out there that believe in them, support them, or relates to them, overall, making it known that they’re not alone.

In conclusion I have found that using online interaction can be very helpful for individual anxiety. Rather it being gaming, discord, social media, activism, or any other form of communication, individuals can use the idea of choosing when to connect with others and when to not, without the worry or hassle of an in-person meeting or social judgment they may receive. 

 References 

1. Connection Between Anxiety and Discord
   1. (Primary) Leary, M. R., & Kowalski, R. M. (1997). Social Anxiety. In Google Books. Guilford Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=NkIlSXNuoNgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
   2. (Primary) Fonseca Cacho, J. (2020). Using Discord to Improve Student Communication, Engagement, and Performance. UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo. https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/btp_expo/95/
   3. (Secondary) Di Marco, L. (2021). User-centered evaluation of Discord in midwifery education during the COVID-19 pandemic: Analysis of the adaptation of the tool to student needs. European Journal of Midwifery, 5, 51.  https://doi.org/10.18332/ejm/142638
2. Online gaming and anxiety 
   1. (Primary) Marino, C., Canale, N., Vieno, A., Caselli, G., Scacchi, L., & Spada, M. M. (2020). Social anxiety and Internet gaming disorder: The role of motives and metacognitions. Journal of Behavioral Addictions. Social anxiety and Internet gaming disorder: The role of motives and metacognitions in: Journal of Behavioral Addictions Volume 9 Issue 3 (2020) (akjournals.com)
   2. (Secondary) APA PsycNet. (n.d.). Psycnet.apa.org. Retrieved December 2, 2021, from https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-63442-001
   3. (Secondary) (2010). Online Gaming Addiction: The Role of Sensation Seeking, Self-Control, Neuroticism, Aggression, State Anxiety, and Trait Anxiety [Review of Online Gaming Addiction: The Role of Sensation Seeking, Self-Control, Neuroticism, Aggression, State Anxiety, and Trait Anxiety]. Mehwash Mehroof and Mark D. Griffith. Online Gaming Addiction: The Role of Sensation Seeking, Self-Control, Neuroticism, Aggression, State Anxiety, and Trait Anxiety | Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking (liebertpub.com)
   4. (Secondary) Dechant, Poeller, S., Johanson, C., Wiley, K., & Mandryk, R. (2020, April 21). RESEARCH-ARTICLE In-game and Out-of-game Social Anxiety Influences Player Motivations, Activities, and Experiences in MMORPGs [Review of RESEARCH-ARTICLE In-game and Out-of-game Social Anxiety Influences Player Motivations, Activities, and Experiences in MMORPGs]. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3313831.3376734?casa_token=amYGOl9_DV0AAAAA:wT2nSRVp0lsqbGaD4CNcp_0TIE7ZEgxNu-VyBDaTD3nAbkPlMiMmsNyDLPtI6pscx3uRV7bcXaJKPw
3. Anxiety and social media relevance
   1. (Primary) Murthy, D. (2018). Introduction to Social Media, Activism, and Organizations. Social Media + Society, 4(1), 205630511775071. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117750716
   2. (Sescondary‌) Lewis, K., Gray, K., & Meierhenrich, J. (2014). The Structure of Online Activism. Sociological Science, 1(1), The Structure of Online Activism | Sociological Science
   3. (Sescondary‌) Smith, M. A., Williamson, L. D., & Bigman, C. A. (2020). Can Social Media News Encourage Activism? The Impact of Discrimination News Frames on College Students’ Activism Intentions. Social Media + Society, 6(2), 205630512092136. Can Social Media News Encourage Activism? The Impact of Discrimination News Frames on College Students’ Activism Intentions – Marisa A. Smith, Lillie D. Williamson, Cabral A. Bigman, 2020 (sagepub.com)
   4. ‌(Sescondary‌) Mico, & Casero-Ripolles, A. (2013, August). Political activism online: organization and media relations in the case of 15M in Spain [Review of Political activism online: organization and media relations in the case of 15M in Spain]. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2013.830634?casa_token=2EinNxzkVl0AAAAA%3A0a3Zykg9r0gpSngLe0JhnAeEqutWnqbrNqThJ_px3VtG0Rz7Jzi3mQU4Cz_aYYJM9wSm5H-muU5YDg