I saw a reference earlier this week to an article on “Shyness: The New Solution” from the Jan/Feb 2000 issue of Psychology Today that presented some results of a survey on shyness — high order bit: 48% of people are shy, up from 40% a decade earlier — and discussed how technology has impacted shyness in the population, by creating a fast-paced, complex, loud & intense hyperculture in which shy people are at a disadvantage. The report says that 58% of shy people are most challenged by the prospect of making introductions, which is precisely the kind of activity we were trying to facilitate through the Ticket2Talk and Neighborhood Window proactive display applications we designed & deployed at UbiComp 2003 (a community which has its share of shy people … as well as a fair amount of fast-paced, complex, loud & intense people).
The author of the Psychology Today article, Bernardo Carducci, argues that technology has increased the pace & complexity in our lives, creating a hyperculture in which shy people, who tend to be slow or reticent, are at a disadvantage. Furthermore, they argue that this hyperculture creates an effect he calls identity intensity, in which people have to present themselves more loudly and/or brightly in order to get attention, creating further disadvantages for shy people. Carducci also argues that “we are also undergoing ‘interpersonal disenfranchisement.’ Simply put, we are disconnecting from one another.”
Most shy people (91%) report that they use strategies to overcome their shyness, the most popular technique (58%) being forced extroversion: going to places or events where they will be in proximity to others. Of course, close is not good enough, and something more is needed in order to create connections with one or more of the people nearby … perhaps something like a Ticket2Talk :-).