Why do some people delete the WhatsApp photo when they are sad

Why do some people delete the WhatsApp photo when they are sad – 01/20/2020

One smiley face under another. This is probably the screenshot you see when opening the app from Whatsapp.

On Twitter, profile photos can take on an ironic and comical air. On LinkedIn they are more square. On Instagram, they tend to look like a magazine cover. Now, on WhatsApp, the idea is simply to identify yourself. But it’s not that simple.

“The image on the internet is increasingly attached to the person himself”, observes psychologist Josie Conti to TAB. “The more we use it, the more we know the mechanisms and adapt to ways of appearing online, to indirect communication codes.”

So what does it mean not to use a photo in the app? Or delete the profile photo? William De Lucca raised the question on Twitter last week: “Guys, in your social circle do people take their profile picture on WhatsApp because they’re sad?” Reactions to the post indicated to William that he was probably blocked — when someone blocks you, you no longer have access to the person’s photo.

I’m sorry but I think they blocked you

? Ju Cantora, more #mpbest than ever (@garciasales) January 13, 2020

Others also commented that it is possible to restrict access to the photo in the app. In the settings, you can make the image visible only to those who are in your device’s contact list.

It wasn’t block

Gradually, the tweeters began to make some confessions. There were those who said that they delete the photo to get the attention of friends; others admit to wanting to provoke some specific little contact. But many claimed to act like that when they are sad. And it’s not just a “teenager thing”, as some users have said.

Trader and writer Fatima Oliveira, 52, says she did just that in June 2019, when she decided to take the WhatsApp photo and stop posting on Instagram. “I was in a very complicated period of my life, a little depressed, I couldn’t deal with anything — friendships, dissatisfaction with work. I wanted to change numbers or delete WhatsApp, but nowadays it’s impossible”, he says.

“If everyone has their face there and I don’t, I’m going to differ from the average and draw attention”, explains psychologist Josie Conti, replicating the psyche of the photo “eraser”. “People will come and ask what I have, what happened, and this generates what we call secondary gain. I can’t say clearly what I’m feeling, so I use subterfuges to draw attention, consciously or not,” says the psychologist.

It is worth noting that “drawing attention” is not necessarily negative or immature. By the way, Conti emphasizes that, as long as it is not a frequent and trivialized behavior, it is worth asking that friend who deleted the photo if he needs a boost.

It’s kind of a way of letting people know that things aren’t going well.

? Lucas Mendes (@lumendes50) January 13, 2020

Fatima really wanted to delimit her personal space, take time for herself and not talk too much. It worked. “I thought a lot of people would find it strange, I thought they’d ask. But I felt a respect from my circle of friends. They knew I was thoughtful and going through a rough patch.”

Tell me what you post…

One University of Pennsylvania study, in the US, analyzed more than 66,000 Twitter profiles to understand if there is a relationship between the personality and the type of photo of users. The researchers fed text prediction software with the tweets and, from the posts, fitted the 66,502 tweeters into the five personalities of the Big Five system — widely used abroad, they represent human types divided into five groups: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion , kindness and neuroticism. The results were compared to a control group of 429 users who completed the personality test questionnaire.

The profile photo of all participants was analyzed by artificial intelligence in several aspects: framing, facial expression, color, posture, among others. Afterwards, the information was cross-referenced, and the team found that they could predict with a good level of accuracy someone’s personality just by looking at their profile picture. According to the study, people who fall into neuroticism have a strong tendency not to show their face.

However, Conti remembers that social networks are also a projection of who we would like to be, not just who we are. So it can be a little tricky to define someone’s personality just from what the person posts on the networks. “There are a lot of people who show exactly the opposite. We see this a lot after a breakup. People put up happy photos to show that everything is ok, and in fact the feeling is exactly the opposite.”