Young adult self-disclosures in psychotherapy and on Facebook

Abstract

While psychotherapy offers young adults a private and confidential avenue for speaking about psychologically sensitive personal information, Facebook has recently emerged as a pervasive and culturally normative platform for personal disclosure. The present study investigated young adult clients’ levels of disclosure across these two contexts, variables (e.g. age and gender) associated with these disclosure patterns, and specific emotional experiences following disclosures in these two contexts. A repeated measures ANOVA indicated that Facebook disclosure occurred at significantly lower levels than psychotherapy disclosure for all gender and age groups under study. In addition, Facebook disclosure was found to be associated with positive emotions following posts, whereas therapy disclosure was significantly associated with negative emotions following therapy sessions. Findings suggest that disclosure across these two platforms serves different needs.

Keywords:

• self-disclosure
• social networking sites
• Facebook
• psychotherapy
• gender

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.