Technology use invites lying, says survey

All of us have been guilty of telling white lies every so often, but new survey results from UK investment firm Friends Provident says that most of us do it every day, and we prefer to use technology as our lying vehicle of choice. The survey was conducted via online poll during the month of November and counted the results from 1,487 respondents, showing that 81 percent of us tell white lies at least once every day. 72 percent of respondents said that they have stretched the truth via some form of technology, with 27 percent lying via e-mail, 27 percent via SMS ("Ur my 1 & only, 4 real!"), and 18 percent via mobile phone calls.

So who are we lying to, exactly? Two-thirds of us who lie with technology like to lie to our bosses and coworkers, according to the survey, about things like being sick, completing work, or making mistakes. Not exactly news that employers are going to be excited to hear. 41 percent of us also lie to our family members or partners, and the top five things to lie to loved ones about were: buying new clothes or their cost, how someone looks in something (how exactly you can tell someone how they look in something when not face-to-face remains a mystery), what we've eaten, what we weigh, and how much we've been drinking. Despite this, 29 percent of respondents reported that lying about where you've been is among the worst things to lie about to your partner.

And when we lie to our friends, family, and bosses, it seems that we'd really prefer to hide behind technology when we can. Nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of respondents in the survey said that technology makes it easier to lie to others and just over half (51 percent) reported that they feel less guilty doing so via technology.

The guilt factor likely comes from having to look someone in the eye when face-to-face, and no such nerve-wracking lie detector exists for mediums such as e-mail and text messages. Skype recently added a "stress detector" into its 3.0 release for Windows, but our initial lie detecting tests were less than impressive. While the Friends Provident poll was available online and may have attracted a more tech-savvy audience than average, the results are still likely to be used as evidence of how technology is driving us apart instead of bringing us together. Until someone develops a method to detect lies in e-mails or instant messages (which would be a respectable feat, to be sure), it looks as if in order to get the real truth out of each other, we'll have to continue relying on the tried and true method of face-to-face communication.