For example, the largest anxiety association in the world many times misuses the term.
Social anxiety permeates all of a person's life.
It is all-encompassing. People with social anxiety fear social situations and events, they do not fear having panic attacks. They fear the high amount of anxiety and the negative self-appraisal experienced before, during, and after a social event. Social anxiety and agoraphobia are light years apart in terms of operational definitions. Social anxiety is a fear of social activities, events, and the people associated with them, which leads to high levels of anxiety, and, therefore, motivates the socially-anxious person to avoid them.