The internet is in constant development; everyday new means
of connecting with people across the world are invented. As we have become more
invested in the Internet’s capabilities, it has worked its way into various
aspects of our lives such as school, work, and family. What I find interesting
is how the Internet impacts relationships and dating. Here’s a quick poll I
made you can take:
TAKE THIS POLL!
Social media has enabled us to learn more about those we are
interested in (family, friends, significant others, crushes etc.) It connects
us to our peers, allowing us to distribute personal information to a mass
audience of our choosing. We can post
photos of our most recent trip, share a funny experience; state our opinions,
likes and dislikes. Often, these are small details about our lives we may not
feel compelled to bring up in conversations with our friends because they may
or may not care. Social media saves us the time of meeting with every friend
daily or repeatedly sharing the same details of our lives with different people.
On the flipside social media enables everyone to become a private
investigator. It is natural that people want to share their opinions, funny
stories and thoughts with others. Yet, social media seems to encourage a new
extent of sharing. There’s the showing of too much skin, sharing personal
relationship or sexual details, venting via social media, and much more. No one
needs to invade your privacy when you’ve made your once private life public. With
so much information aggregated into one place, crushing on someone can easily
become stalking. You can find out where
they ate lunch, their past love interests, family, friends, and basically
experience the past years of their life as though you were actually there.
When you finally do meet up with the hottie you’ve been
crushing on from behind your computer screen, what’s left to talk about if they’re
a frequent user of social media? Mostly everything they’re going to tell you
you’ve already read on their profile page and recent updates. And what happens when you want to make things “Facebook
official” and they don’t want to do the same? Should you have each others’
passwords? Is it valid to bring up that they’ve been chatting with their ex too
much? Social media adds a new aspect to dating and relationships. And although
it may be easier to connect with those you may not have been able to before, do
the potential difficulties it brings to dating and relationships outweigh the
convenience?
What do you all think?
Mylan, I really enjoyed this blog post! Everything that you brought up about the social media, such as facebook, is true when it comes to friendship and relationships. I definitely agree with the face that it can get in the way and cause additional drama in relationships, I say this because I've actually experiences it. I'm in a long distance relationship and of course my boyfriend doesn't like seeing me with pictures of my guy friends that I have been friends with for the past 3 1/2 years. Next thing you know, questions arise, unnecessary arguments starts and its a really frustrating thing. Sometimes I wish I could just delete facebook, because it really causes such unnecessary drama. Therefore, I definitely agree that social media affect dating and relationships.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with the danger in the easy accessibility a stranger has to one's profile, which as you stated can easily turn into stocking. I can also support this argument you had because I have also personally experienced such a situation. It quite a scary thing and can create such concern and fear in ones life. After contacting me and stating the inappropriate "things" he would like to do to me, he eventually was able to also find my boyfriend on facebook and let him know what he was going to do to me. This is also where other parts of our class can come into play when it comes to social media that I feel is important to note. For example, in the Ferguson et al. reading. Social media gives individuals the freedom to verbally comment and sometimes inappropriately verbally request.