Question: in your opinion, do you think that there are any benefits to hiding personal details when forming online relationships, especially for those who lack confidence in face to face relationships?

Sally Tilt answered on 6 Mar 2019:

That’s made me think!

Relationships are such a key part of being human. If we hop back a little to think about how we have evolved, the ability to form relationships with other humans in our group has been a key factor in the evolutionary success of our species. There are many skills that are need for humans to learn about building relationships, and one source of information for how to do this comes from our early interactions with our carers – both from the experience of watching them, and also by observing their reactions to us.

As young adults, we now know that the human brain develops to have a greater interest in risk taking behaviours – this makes sense in terms of evolution. As young adults we might want to take the risk of leaving our close family unit in order to seek out new experiences and a partner.

Once out and about in the wider world, there are a whole range of skills and behaviours that assist us as humans to develop relationships outside of our close family unit, one of which can be to share and disclose information about ourselves to the another person. The degree of disclosure is actually a pretty fine balance – I have worked with some people who have found that boundary difficult to understand, and have often disclosed too much information to the other person too quickly – this can be as tricky as a person who is very guarded and discloses very little.

So – sorry, a bit of a long answer! – I’d say that the ‘right’ amount of information to disclose is a little dependent on the point in the relationship, and the depth and breadth at which the other person has disclosed information to you.