I
am a self-confessed Facebook stalker.
Being
single, I find this one of the greatest forms of easy entertainment on those
lonely nights. Who doesn’t find themselves mindlessly clicking away from time
to time? I don’t necessarily mean spying, just checking up on your friends from
time to time out of curiosity.
I prefer to think of this
activity as "research" or as I like to call it Facestalking. I find
it pretty amazing that the ability to access information can lead us to find
people in way that we never had before. We can find so much information on a
person by simply typing a name into Google and hitting the search button. We
have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs.
Researchers at the University
of Missouri School of Journalism have proved that online stalking,
scientifically speaking, feels good. By monitoring students while they
navigated Facebook and measuring physiological responses associated with
motivation and emotion, the researchers found that the students derived the
most pleasure from activities described as "social searching" or what
they call "goal-oriented surveillance" (how cool is that!) that
involved visiting another friend's profile page, reading their Wall posts,
perusing their photos, checking out the events they'd recently attended.
So, why am I telling you all
this?
