Technology and Social Interaction

            In some ways I feel that technology has hindered the interpersonal skills of today’s youth. Certain things I see make me think that kids especially pre-college don’t know how to talk to each other anymore. That interpersonal jokes have been replaced by YouTube videos of people injuring themselves. That passing conversations have been replaced by status updates, and pick up lines have been replaced by profile matching. It is advertised now by a popular online dating service that now 1 in 5 relationships start online. When I heard this I found it overtly pathetic and representative of all that is wrong with our society today. However, on the other hand of this debacle one sees a significant population that are now happily intimate with another person that they would never have met in an interpersonal context. So are online dating sites desolate place for pathetic people to go, or are they incredible? I honestly can’t tell which they are. An extremist part of me feels that these virtual relationships are a pathetic cop out enabling lonely people to cling onto the idea that they can find romantic fulfillment with going out into the world and facilitating relationships by exposing themselves to rejection. Yet, there exists a an echoing within my brain saying: Be happy for these people, they are able to find love from the convenience and comfort of cyberspace, how can you say that these virtual relationship are any less meaningful than interpersonal relationships. Or am I misinterpreting entirely, Are these sites merely supplemental to the romantic lives of those who use them? Is this not the question behind all social technology, are they being used to accelerate and supplement the social and romantic lives of the citizens of cyberspace Or are they being used as a crutch and in doing so deteriorate the social skills of today’s society?

            I think this is a critical question to the development of our society, whether the internet enhance the social capabilities of the citizens of cyberspace or be used as a crutch hindering the social skill of our society? I think that only time will yield the answers to these questions. But like all questions about populations, generalizations do not give them justice. Their will in all likelihood there will be some who utilize the social capabilities to accelerate their interpersonal relationships and expand their capabilities, and there will be some who use it as a crutch to support a deteriorating set of social skills.