The paper describes an effect called "context collapse" which the authors claim is observed in people who use social networks. The effect is described as people

The paper describes an effect called "context collapse" which the authors claim is observed in people who use social networks. The effect is described as people self-censoring their posts on social media because their audience is potentially represented by a multitude of groups (parents, friends, colleagues). So people self-edit their content in order to satisfy a lowest common denominator. The authors proceed to measure if this self-censoring behaviour extends into real life for people who are thinking about social networks versus people who are not. The method surveyed the participants about either a trip to an adult night club, or a theme park. Half the participants were "primed" with Facebook — meaning they were shown photos of the trips they could take as a mocked-up Facebook event, and they were told they would need to add the trip representative to their Facebook so their photos could be tagged for promotional reasons. The measure they used to determine self-censoring behaviour is called Negatively Directed Impression Management (NDIM). Online this means removing yourself from tagged photos, deleting social media content that may be offensive, or other forms of removal. To measure it offline they asked participants how much they would need to be paid to take part in the trip, and whether they would be interested in a follow up trip (the payment stuff was worked into their cover story). The Facebook-primed group showed significantly higher offline NDIM for the adult night club trip. The theme park trip showed no significant difference. The participants were composed of 80 male Facebook users at a UK university, about 20 years old.