The Online Disinhibition Effect By John Suler

John Suler’s article, The Online Disinhibition Effect, explores six factors that have aided in the creation of the disinhibition effect. Suler explains this effect is when people say things that they usually would in their daily interactions with the physical world. Suler stresses that this effect can either benign, sharing emotions or showing acts of kinds, or toxic, in which rude language and hatred are used. To begin his discussion, Suler introduces the first factor, which is dissociative anonymity. This term describes how people have the ability to hide some or all of their identities. This is one of the popular appeals of the internet because an individual is able to hide a disability, their body shape, or any features about themselves in order to create a new beginning. “When people have the opportunity to separate their actions online from their in-person lifestyle and identity, they

The individual is able to control interactions, meaning that when one has face to face conversations they do not have control over time they are forced to sit there and reply, but online this completely changes. “People don’t interact with each other in real time. Not having to cope with someone’s immediate reaction disinhibits people” (323). This leads Suler into the fourth factor, solipsistic introjection. When an individual is online he/she may begin to develop friendships or relationships, but since they do not have any physical cues of what the other side of the screen looks like the person begins to assign the character features. In his argument Suler says, “The online companions then becomes a character within one’s intrapsychic world, a character shaped partly by how the person actually presents him or herself via text communication” (323). The ability to dictate how one’s companions act or speak is the great appeal of the internet because one is allowed a power that should be beyond his/her