( THIS IS FOR WEEK 4, NOT 3)
3. Technology and Social Interaction
Your task for this assignment is to describe your thoughts on how technology influences social interaction. Do you think the spread of technology has had a positive or negative impact on your everyday face to face interaction? What about for people more generally? What do you think about using the Internet to meet other people (via online dating sites, Craigslist, message boards, fan sites, online gaming, or virtual worlds)? Is connecting to others via online communities a viable way of creating meaningful relationships, or are we neglecting our everyday relationships in favor of these "virtual" relationships? Do we, as a society, need to focus on creating more "real" spaces/public spheres for people to connect, interact, and discuss meaningful political and social issues?
I feel like there are both negative and positive impacts on social interaction due to the internet. Things such as Facebook make it a lot easier to contact friends or family to meet up for something. Also, information can be accessed so fast and with ease. It seems like at this point, internet is a must in order to be successful or even to keep up with the world today.
I feel like dating sights can sometimes supplement face to face interaction in the way that you don’t have to experience that awkward moment of going on a date with someone that you’re not attracted to, because you can just weed them all out on the computer. However, dating sites are setting people up for face to face interaction, so it is only a supplement for a short amount of time.
Sites such as chat rooms are something that I disagree with. While sometimes there are chat rooms for people with similar problems to be able to work through them together, such as depression, this turns the internet into something to hide behind. Real face to face help seems much more supportive and realistic to me. Also, there are dangers to many of these sites. It is extremely easy to create a fake profile and if you are relying on that person to get you through your depression, or whatever thing you need help with, it would be easy to put yourself in a dangerous situation. It seems scary to me to trust in someone or talk to someone every day that you truly don’t know. Realistically, on the internet you can be anyone that you want to be. For some this seems nice because you can create yourself into an idealistic version of yourself, but for me it would be scary that I might not really be talking to the person I thought I was.
However, on a more positive note, the internet has an overall positive affect on my life and social interactions. I don’t feel like I have endangered myself by any of the sites I am a part of or things that I post on Facebook. I am just able to communicate with my friends and family a lot easier and keep close relationships with them.
My cousin spent most of his high school years playing online games with people from all over the world that he doesn’t know. They acted like friends, but really they never even met, but when one of them made a mistake, not knowing the other person personally almost gave them the right to just yell and cuss the other kid out. To me, that doesn’t seem healthy. On the internet he could be good at something and have friends that were like him, but this was at the cost of his face to face relationships, friends at school, and family. Now my cousin has found a way to play his internet games and socialize with people face to face. He goes to gaming conventions. I think just by looking at things like this, our society is trying to hang on to social places where people can go and create personal, “real” relationships with others. I think we should not forget the need for public places, because when the world depends solely on internet and life in a cyber world, there will be nothing real to hold on to or to have real meaning in life.
I really like your take on internet dating sites. I agree that social networking sites can help with interaction in face-to-face interaction, but there does need to be a balance between the two. I also agree with your views about chat rooms. There should be a wall between people and those they decide to interact with over the internet.
ReplyDeleteI think that you are completely right about the fact that in chat rooms it is better to have face to face interaction with people to help someone deal with a problem. If you have that chance to hide yourself behind a name or fake identity, then it can also be dangerous because you can be separated enough to hurt yourself without anyone else knowing. For example, the student who died because of internet hazing and students invading his privacy rights, was in a chat room discussing what was going on with his roommate. Only now are the police investigating whether or not the screen name belonged to the student. So I completely agree that talking to someone in person is much more valuable than talking to them virtually. Perhaps a balance between the two would be a good solution.There are advantages and disadvantages to both.But nevertheless reaching out to someone when you need help is still the most important thing and both face to face and online are good resources.
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