A survey conducted by Barclaycard has claimed that nearly six million people in the UK are regularly using social media platforms to tell porkies, while an additional 10 million are “poised for pretence”.
The results suggest that perhaps users of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks should not get so green with envy when they scan through their newsfeeds and uncover revelations of friends having amazing nights out, landing plum jobs and brushing shoulders with celebrities, as there could be a very good chance that it’s all a product of over-active imaginations.
Men and women are just as bad as each other, it would appear, but the reasons why they let these falsehoods slip out is very different between the two genders. Most men said that they did it to keep their online personas looking impressive, while it comes more down to peer pressure among female fibbers.
Specific reasons given for lying online include feeling a need to sound positive or pretend to have had an enjoyable time doing something (given by 39% of respondents partial to fibbing), as well as the somewhat depressing admission by nearly a third of them that they felt their boring lives need to be boosted with some harmless embellishments of the truth.
The sexes are also divided on their preferred means of cyber-deceit, with men more likely to tweet their far-fetched tales, and women more tempted to touch up their photos and use sharing sites like Instagram to give an inaccurate visual representation of themselves.
Refreshingly, at least some of the respondents were honest enough to admit their dishonesty, with one in 10 of them conceding that they do have a habit of being social media Pinocchios at times.
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