BLOG 3 (SOCIAL INTERACTION)
Its amazing how things can change in such a short amount of time. When I was a kid I was always outside playing. If I wanted to talk to a friend, I would ride my bike to their house and knock on the door. Most of the time my friend would already be at the park playing and the friends parent would tell me where they were and I would ride my bike there to meet them. In rare occasions if I couldn’t find them, I might later call their house to see if they were home. Even in this scenario, I would still want to go meet them to hang out because face to face communication was my primary means of communication. In fact, most of the time my parents didn’t even want me to use the phone.
Now days, its the exact opposite. Face to face communication is often used to talk to a person only when they didn’t answer a phone call or text.
The question to be answered in this blog is does the internet inhibit real social interaction or promote it?
I think thats a unique question that is really left up to an individuals interpretation. Let me explain what I mean:
Technically, then internet promotes more interaction. There is significantly more potential for a person to have much more interactions via the web than in a face to face scenario. Also, interaction is almost instant and there are many form of communications. People preferences for interaction can be appeased easily by just changing the internet platform used to interact. Its much easier for a person to conduct hundreds or thousands of interactions a day using multiple platforms and to me that makes it seem that people can now be more social.
After some thought i determined I really need to define what a “real interaction” is. After a lot of searching, I couldn’t find a definition the the words “social interaction” so I decided to break them apart and see what I thought.
“Interaction” definition (via wikipedia): Interaction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another. The idea of a two-way effect is essential in the concept of interaction, as opposed to a one-way causal effect
“Social” definition: he term social refers to a characteristic of living organisms as applied to populations of humans and other animals. It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.
So, its seems that physical presence isnt listed and based on this research, a interaction via the web would be a real social interaction.
To answer the question specifically, NO, I DO NOT thinking the internet is inhibiting social interactions.
The above answer is my unbiased answer to the question :)
However, The dying art form of face to face communication is incredibly sad. The ability to communicate in person is absolutely essential in order to efficiently function in daily life and work.
Although the internet isn't inhibiting our social interactions, it does seems to be inhibiting our ability to communicate in person (generally speaking, looking at the issue from a statistics standpoint).
I have posted an article below that gives some incredible statistics on the internet and social interacrtion
Article LINK:
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