Shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you from doing all the things you'd like to.

Psychology Today, drawing on the results of a new survey on shyness, discusses solutions for shyness, and technology's ability to exacerbate it.

The irony of a World Wide Web packed with endless amounts of information is that it can also be isolating. As individuals head to their own favorite bookmarked sites, they cut out all the disagreement of the world and reinforce their own narrow perspective, potentially leading to alienation, disenfranchisement and intolerance for people who are different.

In addition, the shy are more vulnerable to instant intimacy because of their lack of social know-how. Normally, relationships progress by way of a reasonably paced flow of self-disclosure that is reciprocal in nature. A disclosure process that moves too quickly--and computer anonymity removes the stigma of getting sexually explicit--doesn't just destroy courtship; it is a reliable sign of maladjustment. Shy people tend either to reveal information about themselves too quickly, or hold back and move too slowly.

(Do the shy always have a lack of "social know-how"? I've encountered many extroverted loners: friendly, empathic, and witty in conversation, but "shy" by self-description. I'm thinking of my mother, a good friend, and that friend's good friend, and some others, almost all women: they're charming in social situations, but rarely enter them, disliking groups or preferring a private or solitary lifestyle. The article's too quick to conflate shyness with slow or stunted social development, and assumes that shyness expresses itself in all new social experiences, rather than expressing itself under specific circumstances or in a person's priorities.)
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