vj288
not actually Fiona Apple
While reading through the forums this topic has come up in the past, and I'm interested to see what other people think about it. I found this short article about both sides that I found to be interesting(below). Especially focu on the bits about online relationships (of all kinds), as someone who communicates with people online exclusively online that's what interested me most.
What are you thoughts, which side do you agree with? Anyone who has in-person relationships to compare, or relationships with people they communicate with on and off-line I'd be interested on hearing insight about.
I'm more inclined to agree with the counter-point, that it creates isolation. I think a lot of it depends on the person using it, how they're using it, what they're doing online and with who. I think most communication online done with people you have a relationship with offline is positive and strengthening. You have an accurate idea of who they are, and it's like an extension of who you know them to be offline.
I think that is because you have experience with them offline, which is what I think is the keystone to all this. The more experience you have in certain situations offline the more easily intimacy in those situations online can be replicated. I think those Nuances the article talked about are extremely important, and the more experience we have with them offline the better idea we can get of them online.
So I don't think you can generalize one way or another, it's very much a case by case thing. If you've never dated offline, I don't think finding intimacy dating online would be an easy task at all. Or if you're a person who isn't very introspective, has a hard time expressing yourself, strives on people picking up on those nuances, internet would more likely breed isolation than intimacy. And any troubles you have offline will follow online too, unless there is a specific external cause for it (SA maybe?).
Me personally find the internet is more isolating than it is intimac... "intimacing." That's why I'm more inclined to agree with the counterpoints. A lot of things I do online I have no experience doing offline, makes it feel less real. I have a problem with intimacy to begin with, am a secretive and closed off person. But even spending all this time with people online, I don't feel the bonds are being created that should be, and partially because of the medium without question.
Social Psychology said:Does the internet create intimacy or isolation?
As a reader of this college text, you are almost surely one of 1.5 billion internet users. It took the telephone seven decades to go from 1 percent to 75 percent penetration of north american households. Internet access reached 75% penetration in about 7 years. You and about half of European Union citizens, 3 and 4 Americans, and more than 4 in 5 Canadians and Australians enjoy email, Web surfing, and perhaps participating in listservs, news groups, or chatrooms (internetworldstats.com)
What do you think: Is computer-mediated communication within virtual communities a poor substitute for in-person relationships?Or is it a wonderful way to widen our social circles? Does the internet do more to connect people or to drain time from face-to-face relationships? Consider the emerging debate.
Point: The internet, like the printing press and the telephone, expands communication, and communication enables relationships. Printing reduces face-to-face story telling, and the telephone reduces face-to-face chats, but both enable us to to reach and be reached by people without limitations of time and distance. Social relations involve networking, and the net is the ultimate network. It enables efficient networking with family, friends, and kindred spirits - including people we otherwise never would have found, be they fellow MS patients, St. Nicholas collectors, or Harry Potter fans (Or Social phobia suffers)
Counterpoint: True, but computer communication is impoverished. It lacks the nuances of eye-to-eye contact punctuated with nonverbal cues and physical touches. Except for simple emoticons - such asfor an unnuanced smile - electronic messages are devoid of gestures, facial expressions, and tones of voice. No wonder it's so easy to misread them. The absence of expressive e-motion makes for ambiguous emotion.
For example, vocal nuances can signal whether a statement is serious, kidding, or sarcastic. Research by Justin Kruger and his colleagues (2006) shows that communicators often think their "just kidding" intent was equally clear, whether e-mailed or spoken. Actually, when e-mailed it often isn't. Thanks also to virtual anonymity in virtual discussions, the result is sometimes a hostile "flame war."
The internet, like television, diverts time away from real relationships. Internet romances are not the development equivalent of real dating. Cybersex is artificial intimacy. Individualized web-based entertainment displaces getting together for bridge. Such artificiality and isolation is regrettable, because out ancestral history predisposes our needing real-time relationships, replete with smirks and smiles. No wonder that Stanford university survey found that 25 percent of more than 4000 adults surveyed reported that their time online had reduced the time spent in person and on the phone with friends and family (Nie & Erbring, 2000)
Point:But most folks don't perceive the internet to be isolating. Another national survey found that "internet users in general - and online woman in particular - believe that their use of e-mail has strengthened their relationships and increased their contact with relatives and friends" (Pew, 2000). Internet use may displace in-person intimacy, but also displace television watching. If one-click cyber-shopping is bad for your local bookstore, it frees time for relationships. Telecommunicating does the same, enabling people to work from home and thereby spend more time with their families.
And why say that computer-formed relationships are unreal? On the internet your looks and location cease to matter. Your appearance, age, and race don't deter people from relating to you based on what's more genuinely important - your shared interests and values. In workplace and professional networks, computer-mediated discussions are less influenced by by status and therefore more candid and equally participatory. Computer-mediated communication fosters more spontaneous self-disclosure than face-to-face conversation(Joinson, 2001)
Most internet flirtations go nowhere. "Everyone I know who has tried online dating ...agrees that we loathe spending (wasting?) hours gabbing to someone and then meeting him and realizing that he is a creep," observed one Toronto woman (Dicum, 2003). Nevertherless, friendships and romantic relationships that form on the internet are more likely than in-person relationships to last for at least two years, report Katelyn McKenna and John Bargh, and their colleagues (Bargh & others, 2002, 2004; McKenna & Bargh, 1998, 2000; McKenna & others, 2002) In one experiment, they found that people disclosed more, with greater honesty and less porturing, when they met people online. They also felt more liking for the people with whom they conversed online for 20 minutes than for those met for the same time face-to-face. This was true even when they unknowingly met the very same person in both contexts. People surveyed similarly feel that Internet friendships are real, important, and as close as offline relationships.
No wonder a Pew survey (2006) of internet users found users who are single and looking for romance found that 74 percent used the internet used the internet to further their romantic interests and that 37 percent had gone to an online dating website. One popular internet matchmaking website claimed, by 2008, 17 million participants and $200 million in annual revenue. (Cullen & Masters, 2008) Although published data on the effectiveness of online matchmaking is sparse, efforts are underway to harvest data from hundreds of questions put to thousands of couples to see which combinations of answers might help predict enduring relationships. (Epstien, 2007; Tierney, 2008)
Counterpoint: The internet allows people to be who they really are, but also to feign who they really aren't, sometimes in the interests of sexual exploitation. Internet sexual media, like other forms of pornography, likely serve to distort people's perceptions of sexual reality, decrease the attractiveness of their real life partner, prime men to perceive woman in sexual terms, make sexual coercion more trivial, provide mental scripts for how to act in sexual situations, increase arousal, and lead to disinhibition and imitation of loveless sexual behaviors.
Finally, suggests Robert Putnam (2000), the social benefits of computer-mediated communication are constrained by two other realities. The "digital divide" accentuates social and educational inequalities between the haves and the have-nots. Although "cyberbalkanizanation" enables those of us with hearing loss to network, it also enables white supremacists to find one another. The digital divide may be remedied with lowering computer prices and increasing public access locations. The balkanizanation is intrinsic to the medium
As the debate over the internet's social consequences continues, "the most important question," says Putnam (p.180), will be "not what the internet will do to us, but what will we do with it?...How can we harness this promising technology for thickening community ties? How can we develop the technology to enhance social presence, social feedback, and social cues? How can we use the prospect of fast, cheap communication to enhance the now fraying fabric of real communities?"
What are you thoughts, which side do you agree with? Anyone who has in-person relationships to compare, or relationships with people they communicate with on and off-line I'd be interested on hearing insight about.
I'm more inclined to agree with the counter-point, that it creates isolation. I think a lot of it depends on the person using it, how they're using it, what they're doing online and with who. I think most communication online done with people you have a relationship with offline is positive and strengthening. You have an accurate idea of who they are, and it's like an extension of who you know them to be offline.
I think that is because you have experience with them offline, which is what I think is the keystone to all this. The more experience you have in certain situations offline the more easily intimacy in those situations online can be replicated. I think those Nuances the article talked about are extremely important, and the more experience we have with them offline the better idea we can get of them online.
So I don't think you can generalize one way or another, it's very much a case by case thing. If you've never dated offline, I don't think finding intimacy dating online would be an easy task at all. Or if you're a person who isn't very introspective, has a hard time expressing yourself, strives on people picking up on those nuances, internet would more likely breed isolation than intimacy. And any troubles you have offline will follow online too, unless there is a specific external cause for it (SA maybe?).
Me personally find the internet is more isolating than it is intimac... "intimacing." That's why I'm more inclined to agree with the counterpoints. A lot of things I do online I have no experience doing offline, makes it feel less real. I have a problem with intimacy to begin with, am a secretive and closed off person. But even spending all this time with people online, I don't feel the bonds are being created that should be, and partially because of the medium without question.
