In today's time, the Internet is becoming more and more popular every day. People use the Internet for almost everything now in days. From finding information to selling supplies to chatting with a friend you have not seen in years or days. Because the internet has a lot of features in it that we all love, of coarse there are those who fear it, thus new phobias and anxieties are born. People who have anxieties towards being social in general tend to look to the internet for an escape from people, a haven of sorts.
However with the increase of social interacting sites like Facebook and twitter coming up and becoming more popular, the anxieties grow into fears that delve into social interaction using the internet. People who gain these fears really have a whole bunch of fears just meshed together that all collect into one giant anxiety that affects everything they do whether it is on the internet or outside in the real world. Or it could just be on the internet itself, it really depends on the person. They fear making mistakes that they can not take back, since the internet seems to be like a black hole that sucks everything in and does not spit anything out. They fear that they will mess up and write something on a page that would affect their overall image that they had made for themselves. That itself has become a fear that people try to stay away from on a daily basis.
There is also the wanting to 'fit in', to be in a group of people. Humans are social creatures which seek other humans to accept them and acknowledge them as another human worth anything to society. Using the internet to get that attention, so we can be with another group of people, whether it is in person or not, can create either great pleasure if we are accepted or anxiety, depression, and sometimes even fear if we are rejected. We all fear rejection of any kind, and having it in person is a horrible feeling. However, you can at least rationalize why you were rejected if the person or people rejecting you in front of you. On the internet, not only is the person or people not even there in front of you, they might not even be in the same county as you. The rejection is very impersonal and, most of the time, gives you nothing as a hint as to why you were rejected. That is just adding more negative feelings to the rejection by people on a screen; making more anxiety and fear for the person involved.
The internet, for people who have other anxieties/fears than just the internet, could help to amplify them. The internet has an entire world's worth of information in its data banks. People who have anxieties already might get new information from the internet that might or might not be true and get overly scared about the topic they looked up, even knowing they would be afraid even more because humans are curious creatures who do not know how to not look at something they know they would regret. And since they used the internet for getting this information, now they have a fear of whatever they looked up but now a fear of the internet as a result.
There is also the wanting to 'fit in', to be in a group of people. Humans are social creatures which seek other humans to accept them and acknowledge them as another human worth anything to society. Using the internet to get that attention, so we can be with another group of people, whether it is in person or not, can create either great pleasure if we are accepted or anxiety, depression, and sometimes even fear if we are rejected. We all fear rejection of any kind, and having it in person is a horrible feeling. However, you can at least rationalize why you were rejected if the person or people rejecting you in front of you. On the internet, not only is the person or people not even there in front of you, they might not even be in the same county as you. The rejection is very impersonal and, most of the time, gives you nothing as a hint as to why you were rejected. That is just adding more negative feelings to the rejection by people on a screen; making more anxiety and fear for the person involved.
The internet, for people who have other anxieties/fears than just the internet, could help to amplify them. The internet has an entire world's worth of information in its data banks. People who have anxieties already might get new information from the internet that might or might not be true and get overly scared about the topic they looked up, even knowing they would be afraid even more because humans are curious creatures who do not know how to not look at something they know they would regret. And since they used the internet for getting this information, now they have a fear of whatever they looked up but now a fear of the internet as a result.
