These days, with the efficiency of smart phones, our email, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Tumblr, BlogSpot, etc., it’s easier to form and maintain seemingly intimate relationships now more than ever. Here in western civilization, we’re always connected, always communicating; technology has effectively changed the landscape of how we gather and interpret news as well as communicate amongst one another.
Unfortunately, the price we’re paying is the legitimacy of our relationships.
I think the abundance and frequency of which these social networks are utilized creates a breeding ground for superficial relationships. Now, more so than any other generation, we are able to present ourselves in online profiles to our peers in a meticulous, thought out and analyzed manner.
We’re able to show exactly the image we wish to portray and omit those qualities we’d rather not show to the world. Social networking sites like Facebook allow us to create an idealized version in our imaginations of whom we are talking to. Now, we can choose how we interact with one another and how often we wish to interact.
When we no longer want to carry on a conversation we can simply choose to log off and not pay for the repercussions of bluntly choosing to stop talking to someone by blaming our computers for lagging or abruptly shutting down. When we’re at a loss for what to say we can take time to think it through thoroughly and preface our awkward delay with being distracted by something happening around us, because, lets face it, they’ll never know.
We’re able to take time before we speak, to construct our sentences, to use our thesauri to find a better word to use when trying to impress someone. Interactions like this create a sense of idealization; we don’t have to actually see the person; we don’t have to notice how they chew loud when they eat, how they twitch their eye awkwardly when they are nervous, their loud obnoxious laugh, or the way they occasionally stutter over their words.
Because of that, we create them in our heads to be and fit who we want them to be. We’re able to be whomever we want on the Internet and, because of that, I think we’re losing sight of who we actually are.
