Amara is an extremely self-conscious teenager who struggles with a severe stutter and high social anxiety, which makes face-to-face interactions at her school highly stressful. However, since joining an online virtual reality platform, she has developed a very close relationship with another user, Jordan. Within a month, Amara has disclosed intimate personal details that she has never shared with her offline peers. She enjoys being able to edit her messages before sending them, making her feel like she is presenting her "perfect self" without the usual physical and verbal obstacles.
Discuss psychological research into virtual relationships in social media. Refer to self-disclosure, the absence of gating, and Amara's experiences in your answer.
Practise AQA A Level Psychology Relationships with exam-style questions for A Level Psychology. 70 questions covering Factors affecting attraction, Theories of romantic relationships, Online relationships, and Parasocial relationships, matched to the AQA A Level Psychology (7182) specification and written in Paper 1, Paper 2 and Paper 3 style. Every question includes a full worked solution and mark scheme, so you can see where marks are awarded rather than just whether you got the answer right.