Away message stalking allows people to check what their “buddies” are doing throughout the day. A person’s buddy list can include many different people—including those who are our closest friends to those who we only used to be friends with in middle school to those who we do not really even know. Some people change their away message status frequently, while other people leave the same message up all day, apparently still “sleeping” from the night before. Away message stalking can be associated with problematic internet use (PIU) in some instances, but all stalkers do not necessarily have PIU. There are aspects of the internet associated with away message stalking that exist for everyone, but I think that there are individual differences between all stalkers that lead some people to develop PIU while others do not.
According to Wallace, there are certain properties of away message stalking that are related to the internet, such as operant conditioning and maintenance of virtual presence. Operant conditioning regards the rewarding of behavior with a variable schedule. With such an inconsistent reward schedule, the behavior is more difficult to extinguish. Finding an updated away message is the great reward for those who stalk down their buddy list. Because people post new away messages at different and unpredictable times throughout the day, away message stalkers are even more so drawn to continually check their buddy lists. The maintenance of virtual presence is also an associated factor of the internet that involves away messages. As opposed to just standing on the sideline while watching and checking status changes, away message stalkers are able to produce behavior and be apart of it as well. Away message stalkers have the ability to update their own away messages to keep others informed of their activities in the virtual AIM environment. These internet properties are present for all AIM users, but they seem to me to only have an especially problematic impact for those with individual differences that are associated with PIU. As maintained my Davis, Flett, and Besser (2002), PIU is predicted on the basis of four dimensions—diminished impulse control, loneliness/depression, social comfort, and distraction/procrastination—which I think can all be related to away message stalkers. The urge to check away messages can be especially common if a person is feeling lonely or is looking for a distraction from his responsibilities. Also, if a person is lacking in social comfort he will be more at ease if he can use AIM away messages as an online space to observe people instead of facing the fear of direct contact in face to face interaction.
In regards to Caplan’s model of problematic internet behavior, away message stalking is problematic for those who do so in excess, spending longer checking their buddies’ status than they had planned. The behavior is also problematic when stalkers compulsively check AIM away messages and their stalking obsessions later cause feelings of guilt. Caplan’s model theorizes that individuals with psychosocial problems and low social competence prefer less threatening interactions via internet as opposed to face to face, which in turn leads to compulsive use of the internet which connects again to psychosocial problems. This however, is a mediated connection because one must be low on social competence and have a preference for the internet in order for it to lead to problematic, excessive use. Thus I do not believe that all away message stalkers have issues with PIU, such as people who just have a preference for using AIM and the internet. It is people with individual differences specifically related to PIU, like low social competence and loneliness, that also have a preference for AIM as a means of social interaction, who will come to excessively stalk away messages.
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Hi Megan
Good job - away messages are a classic example of unpredictable behavior, thereby drawing us more and more to stalk people by their away messages. And not only is it unpredictable, but it's hard to track as well. With email, you at least have a notification in your inbox that says how many messages you've received that you haven't read and you can check those. With away messages, there's no such tracking method and you just have to check everyone's message over and over again. This is probably another reason that it leads to PIU - since we don't know what had changed, we tend to do the same thing over and over again, which isn't very healthy.
It's also highly social and somewhat voyeuristic and although this wasn't really covered in class, I think it's another example of something that leads to PIU. While it's probably not a problem for everyone as you said, it can be quite obsessive after a certain point, especially when you have nothing to do.
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