Electronic Etiquette

When you get into an elevator you are most likely to keep your eyes front, it’s the social norm, it’s what we know to be acceptable without ever being told. People who break this norm will inexplicitly make others feel a tad uncomfortable.

With the explosion of technology and communication expanding to text messages, skype, facebook, instant messages, blogs and twitter, a whole new set of social norms for acceptable behaviour are being born.

Now I’m the first to admit I am a little OCD. I like to understand the system, know things have their place and devise a set of rules to ensure things stay, as they should, in their place. For example, I created a set of criteria that qualifies the acceptance of a 'friend' of mine on facebook:

1) Naturally, I accept all current friends;

2) I accept old friends who I may not see often or again, but who were genuinely nice people;

3) I accept people I have met at least twice (one night out on the turps does not qualify you as a friend) and who I think I could possibly become good friends with and;

4) I accept all family.

Like technology, my ‘friend’ criteria reserves the right to be fluid and recently I have been challenged to review these criteria.   

Several weeks ago we had the parent’s in-law stay with us for a week. They were motivated by the social norm that says ‘you must visit relatives when in a 20km radius of their place’ to, you guessed it, visit relatives that live 20km from our place. I in turn was motivated by the social norm that says ‘you must try to please your parent’s in-law’ and you guessed it again, went along for the visit of our local relatives. I must say we had quite the pleasant evening, nothing like our few and far between past encounters. There was no bitchy remarks directed my way, no meddling attempts to try to get my husband and I to turn against each other, my husband remained head butt free from the hyperactive youngster and there was no need for me to disembark parenting 101 on someone else’s kids to avoid serious injury or death (although there was an incident involving a young boy and a 4 wheeler with no lights hitting a concrete wall at speed).

The next day following our pleasant encounter I received a facebook message from our familial host exchanging pleasantry’s about the night passed and registering his use of facebook, I promptly friended my family member. Since this time I have to admit, I have become a tad uncomfortable, receiving up to 3 instant messages daily and 2 facebook email messages weekly just to say hello. My husband, the blood relative of our friendly male cousin has received less than a handful of messages in this same time.

Maybe the social norms around electronic communication are still in the process of being formed and while I find this recent flurry of communication unusual it may be the norm for others. At the moment it is quite interesting to observe and hypothesise the reasons why it is occurring and to monitor whether, without my engaging in any responses, the behaviour will attenuate towards my more limited electronic etiquette. Hopefully this will be the case and my friend criteria will not need a review!