Social Stigma Takes The People To Seek Online Help

Men are more inclined to online advice than women

If your friend has just gone through a breakup in relations and is reluctant to talk to you about that unhappy event, a new study has found the reason for that reluctance.

A new study has found out that men as compared with women are more inclined to seek online communities for relationship advice and space where they can vent candid expressions of their frustrations and anxieties.

The review published by researchers at Lancaster University and the University of Zurich on October 23, evaluated the Reddit activity of 184,631 people in ‘r/relationship’ an online community offering services concerning discussions and advice in romantic relations.

Out of the 184,631 people they analyzed, the review concluded that 54.62 percent of the users seeking help in relationships were men while 45.38 percent were women.

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The study published in the SAGE journal also found more adolescent boys seeking relationship help than girls of the same age, with the boys submitting about 5,447 posts while girls posted only 1,828.

“We found the data very interesting,” said study researcher Charlotte Entwistle, a Ph.D. student in psychology at the University of Lancaster.

There were a lot of contradictions compared with the previous research conducted based on gender-specific specific help-seeking behavior that found that the girls were traditionally more inclined to seek help concerning relationships problems and also encouraged the husbands to seek relationship help.

The researchers tried to properly evaluate some of the important themes of the relationship and found that ‘heartache’ was by far the most popular.

National posts on Reddit found some posts detailing questions about love distance, unrequited love, and post-separation heartache.

Reddit is polite and compassionate in its response to its users but sometimes suggested its users to quite the relations who repeatedly complained about unrest and mental disruption because of the relationship. They suggested letting go of the unbalanced relations keeping in view the major age gap and his girl’s friend’s feelings on love.

In another post almost three months ago, the twenty-nine-year-old man wrote the heartfelt bitter realities he felt in his fifteen-year-long secret love for his female bests friend, in response to which Reddit users unanimously suggested keeping that relationship intact.

“It is the game of now or never as you waited for fifteen years.” reads one response.

They study those who are passing through challenging and distressful moments of life, they always turn towards someone else to find some inner consolation, comfortableness, support, and protection.

This was all suggested; despite the previous research of Entwistle which found that men in matters of distress and anxiety adopt the strategy of avoidance. Men tend to avoid relations based on intimacy and also avoid taking support from anybody.

“Based on these ideas one can understand that the time man is seeking help from others is the time when he is more securely attached.”

If this assumption is true then it leads to another contradiction, why the person who is comfortable and securely attached seek support from others anonymously online instead of in person?

It is because of the social stigma, Entwistle explained. “The biggest advantage of this platform is that it is entirely anonymous and identity remains in secrecy which prevents social stigma.”