On-line Self-disclosure Of College Students

With the development of the Internet, a wide rang of products that related closed to life has been produced, especially the on-line social tools having big effect on individual self-expression and interpersonal interaction. As a result, social psychologists pay close attention to it. Because on-line self-disclosure is one factor influencing virtual relationship and is so lack of related empirical research. From the view of social psychology, through the method of empirical research, the article choose students from Sichuan Normal University to explore the topic of on-line self-disclosure,including topic, reason, means of expression and influences. Method: A sample of 500 undergraduates that are randomly chosen from Sichuan Normal University accomplish questionnaire, including the years and frequency of using social network service, motivation of using social network. Finally, 321 questionnaire are valid. Then we choose 5 subjects through purpose sampling selection from the 321 students and do a in-depth interview. The purpose is to realize the topic, reason, means and influences of on-line self-disclosure. Results: 1. Internet social tools are very popular among college students, because college students have long time experience of using online social software with high frequency of using them. 2. Currently, the most popular software is Wechat, QQ and weibo. If researchers want to get much information about ego, they should select the most popular on-line social tools to do research. 3. Accessing to information, interaction with their friends, killing time and reducing pressure is the main reasons of using on-line network software and websites. 4. The content of on-line self-disclosure is focused on studying and working, life, hobbies, emotions, heterosexual relationship, parent-child relationship, interpersonal relationship, gossip of celebrity, anecdotes. 5. The subject factor influencing college students on-line self-disclosure is emotions, getting support, searching assistance and reducing loneliness. The objective factor influencing on-line self-disclosure is the relationship, topic, expression objects and culture. 5. According to the forms of self-disclosure, college students convey themselves through texts, pictures, comments, reviews and expression package. According to the attitude of contents, they using positive, negative, and neutral way to disclose themselves. According the degree of consciousness, they express themselves on line consciously and unconsciously. 6. On-line self-disclosure has negative, positive and neutral effect on college students.