how has technology impacted people's social anxiety

While it's plausible that technology offers new venues for self-presentation, the claim that it uniformly creates novel and heightened performance pressures overstates the case. - Performance is not new, only new mediums: Erving Goffman's account of social life shows that everyday interactions have always been theatrical and evaluative; digital platforms extend existing social dynamics rather than invent a fundamentally new kind of performance (Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life). - Quantification amplifies visibility but also democratizes feedback: Metrics like likes or views make social responses visible, but they also enable rapid, broad feedback that many users find liberating and informative rather than threatening. For some people, measurable responses reduce uncertainty and anxiety compared with ambiguous offline cues (Vogel et al., 2014; user variation noted in research). - Selective exposure and control can reduce pressure: Online interactions often allow more control — editing posts, rehearsing messages, or choosing when to engage — which can lower performance anxiety relative to unpredictable face-to-face encounters (Capone et al., 2019). - Not all users experience amplification: Algorithms may amplify certain content, but many users operate in small networks or private groups where normative pressures are minimal; context and usage patterns matter more than the medium itself (Rodebaugh et al., 2012). - New pressures can be therapeutic in some cases: For some individuals, curated online self-presentation offers a safe space to practice social skills and gain confidence before transferring them offline. Technology can thus mitigate, not only exacerbate, social-evaluative fear (Andersson, 2018). In short, technology changes the modalities and visibility of social performance but does not inherently generate a new kind of evaluative anxiety for everyone; effects are mediated by context, individual differences, and the affordances users exploit.