Dear Aunt Facebook…

PHOTO | TED ALJIBE | FILE The Facebook logo seen on a computer screen. Psychologist Nancy Kimani says that generally, women are conditioned to share their problems more than men.

What you need to know:

  • Why are so many women taking their most private problems to total strangers on social media sites? And what are the repercussions of accepting the advice offered?

When 30-year-old Judy was stressed after having a nasty fight with her baby daddy last week, she poured her heart out in great detail in a Facebook group that she belongs to together with around 8,000 other women.

She was not really thinking about it, she says; she was just bursting to get it off her chest. Judy is just one of a multitude of women who are turning to social networking sites, notably Facebook and Twitter, seeking solutions to their personal problems and writing out their entire lives on pages and blogs.

Emma Wahogo, 27, confides that she regularly shares her problems in various groups on social media. “I can’t expect my friends to be available each and every time I am in a fix. But a Facebook group is like a gathering of friends who are available to me at any hour of the day or night,” she says.

False sense of security

Psychologist Nancy Kimani says that generally, women are conditioned to share their problems more than men. According to her, women are further lured by the false sense of security and connectedness that social networking sites give.

This, coupled with the fact that social media appears to be an accessible and convenient outlet, makes it difficult for many to control their impulse to share. “Hiding behind a screen gives one the courage to write things that they wouldn’t otherwise talk about — things that they may be too embarrassed to share with their friends in real life,” Nancy says.

Nelly Mwangi, a single mother, says that social networking has been invaluable, especially in regard to parenting. Nelly, 25, had her son when she was 21 and as a young mother, she says she got a lot of helpful advice on parenting.

When she got into a serious relationship, Facebook was where she went for advice on birth control. “They had been very resourceful in regard to parenting and I figured that all of them, being mothers, must know quite a bit about birth control.

A certain woman swore by Norplant, a hormonal contraceptive. She talked about how it was easy use, how it had increased her libido without giving her any negative side effects and it seemed like the best option.”

When Nelly got the Norplant implant, instead of the high libido she had been expecting, she began experiencing migraines and got severe acne. She waited, thinking it must be a passing phase, until it became unbearable. So she did what she ought to have done from the outset; she went to a hospital, got professional guidance, and switched to a physical barrier method that suits her better.

Dr Wanjiru Ndegwa, a gynaecologist with a private practice at the Kileleshwa Medical Plaza, observes that social media can be resourceful in regard to self-awareness, getting contacts of medical professionals, or knowing where one can get specialised help. However, she urges caution when it comes to following advice on health matters.

“This advice isn’t usually given with malicious intent, but these women aren’t professionals. Following their advice equates to self-diagnosing and self-treating, which can dangerously delay medical help. Answers to every health problem cannot be sought on social media. Issues like family planning and birth control methods are very personal; just because one woman had an elective caesarean section and had a pleasant experience doesn’t mean that it is the way to go. Take your health concerns to a health professional,” she advises.

Christine, a communications professional and the founder of a women’s group on Facebook, shares these sentiments. She sees social media as both a blessing and a curse. The key, she says, lies in knowing what to consume and what to discard. “It can be a life saver. I was recently stuck on Mombasa Road at night with no fuel and I only had a Visa card. Within five minutes I knew where I could gas up with a credit card,” she says.

Similarly, she says, she has seen women giving misleading advice online. To stay safe, when she is seeking advice she tries to limit the answers by specifying that she is looking for someone who has been through that particular experience. When she comes across someone who has posted a medical or marital issue, she tries to be helpful by suggesting that she talks it over with her partner or seeks professional help.

There are also criminals who take advantage of the false sense of togetherness that online communities provide. Celestine Mugaa draws from experience.

Not very long ago, she reached out to a woman who was allegedly trying to break free from an abusive marriage and who had posted her problem on the Facebook group they both belong to. Driven by a sense of sisterhood or perhaps the fact that she had experienced an abusive relationship in her past, she and a few other women put together some money to help this “victim” get back on her feet. They found out much later that she was a con using a fake name and that there was no abusive marriage. “I now like to keep my distance,” she says.

A bigger audience

Seeking to get the various views that people hold regarding an issue is one thing, but how does a woman go ahead and apply the advice that she got from a person who has no intimate knowledge of the situation at hand and who does not have any professional training?

Psychologist Nancy says that the sense of belonging to a community and the feeling that “we are together in this” makes some people to be trusting. They imagine that they are in similar circumstances and that the other person has their best interests at heart.

“Also, women may be subconsciously seeking out those people who will support their decisions regardless of whether they are right or wrong; these people can only be found in the online world. What they do not know is that even a small problem will seem unmanageable when you have a whole group obsessing over it.”

The fact that she is interacting in a “closed group” can easily blind a woman to the interconnected nature of the Internet. Many women continue to intimately share on social networking sites, oblivious to the negative impact this can have.

When they are hurting and need to vent, many women, like 29-year-old Sabina, do not weigh the possible consequences of their sharing. When she posted an unflattering description of her work and female employer at a small private company she was working for last year, all she wanted to do was feel better.

She got the supportive responses she was hoping for and went to bed feeling much better. As fate would have it, her boss was a member of this group and she was fired the very next day.

Some women who cannot resist the urge to share but are wary of being vulnerable to strangers resort to using aliases. Abby, a mother-of-two, says that there are times she needs to hear opinions about issues that she is going through with her husband.

Sometimes they are not issues that she would talk to her friends about out of fear that they may think that her relationship is failing, so she seeks opinions under a different name or in second person perspective.

“Usually, I will pose as if I am seeking help on behalf of a friend. This way, it feels less personal and focus shifts from me to the problem. Most of the time I get conflicting responses, but I read them, then make my own decision.”

Over-sharing

Julius Gitari, a counselling psychologist with the Kenya Institute of Professional Counsellors, is of the view that owing to our nature as social beings when in a community of sharing, it is easy to give in to the pressure to share so that the other person does not feel exposed.

When we do this, we forget that it is not only your life you are sharing but also private details about your significant other or those close to you. A 30-year-old woman who only wishes to be identified as Muthoni learnt this the hard way.

A little while ago, she and her husband, whom she says is a very private person, had a series of rows over a friendship he had cultivated with a younger man. They took to late night drinking and each time he stayed out late or missed an event at their children’s school, she vented about it in a Facebook group that both his sisters and hers belonged to.

She says that it was a bumpy phase but they finally worked it out and reconciled. Fast forward to eight months later and her husband is still angry that she disrespected him in “public” and he seems distant.

“Even if I have apologised many times, I still get the feeling that he is afraid to be open with me because he is afraid that I will put our issues out there again. He keeps saying that I shouldn’t have made my family and friends think that he is irresponsible,” she says.

Most users join groups that resonate with them and can be helpful. Nevertheless, Rehema Kahurananga, a communications professional with an NGO and one of the founders of a group for mothers on Facebook, calls for caution.

She says that she has turned to social media to seek parenting advice. The responses are always speedy, but she insists that not all advice should be heeded and it is up to the person asking to sift through the information.

When it comes to sharing personal or intimate issues, she steers clear of social media because she observes that once you post something, you lose the sense of total confidentiality. Before she posts anything, questions or answers, she thinks of the repercussions.

“Even when seeking parenting advice, I make sure that I do not include details that my son may be ridiculed over or feel embarrassed about should he come across it when he is older.”

All the same, there are women like Agatha Mugure who feel that social networking sites should be used purely for networking. Mugure feels that she is best placed to handle her personal problems and if she has to talk, she connects with her close friends in real life.

She equates social media to those small friendship groups back in high school when you would tell your little secret to a group of three or four friends over 4pm tea break and your secret would be all everyone was talking about after evening preps.