Can American People Develop an Intimate and Romantic Relationship Online?
Amariche Hawkins
University of Southern California Introduction Imagine a scenario where a man has created a Facebook profile and structured his online persona in a way that showcases what he believes to be his best attributes. He shares posts about his love for sports, cooking and literature. Over a short period of time, a young lady sees his profile and is intrigued by all the things that he has shared about himself publicly. She reaches out to him via a private message and over a period of time, of texting and sharing pictures, the two begin to build a relationship. This scenario is not uncommon. In fact 41% of American people said they knew of someone who
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Americans can log in to their favorite social media platform or dating app and begin to immediately dialogue with anyone that is a reflection of one’s personal ideals and culture. The argument that community has increased still does not answer the question whether or not a true intimate relationship can take place with someone, who is not there physically. It was once thought that people who develop intimate relationships have to be from the same social class. However, when one presents their online identity, impression management allows everyone to dictate what they choose to share. It is believed by some researchers that the introducing of a new relationship starts out as being impersonal and the more one shares, the further the relationship develops thereby becoming hyper personal. Does that mean quantity of information that is passed back and forth between two parties have more significance than quality time or physical time spent in front of each other? One theorist has developed a theory based on this assumption. Joseph Walther is credited for developing a theory called Social Information Processing Theory which is a derivative of Media Richness theory founded by Richard L. Daft and Robert H. Lengel. Walther wanted to understand how relationships were being created online and if real intimacy can be achieved. There is some problems in defining
Facebook, a social media site, enables people to acquire hundreds, and even thousands, of casual relationships using technology. The problem with this is, considering the amount of time it requires to sustain a relationship, people can only develop so many.
Virtual relationships are becoming more and more popular, due to social media. Along with relationships, Lambert brought up a comparison between modern intimacy and pre-modern intimacy, which states that modern intimacy is privatization and pre-modern intimacy is obligatory relationships. Because virtual relationships are becoming more popular, these types of intimacy may not matter as much because virtual intimacy could become a social norm. Since everything is on the internet, there is no such thing as privacy. Young people are so prone to the idea of having social media that they do not think twice about posting a self-promoting status or
When it comes to dating certain individual never dealt with the awful feelings of unreciprocated affection; either they have never been rejected or have never been disappointed after meeting a person after another. As a result, others never had to experience turning away a suitor. As technology evolves, our current lifestyle makes it incredibly challenging to meet people. The lack of time and lack of self-assurance is roughly the reasons why individuals used the Internet as an alternative to dating. In order to find their acquaintances, they use various social media platforms to engage in a mass communication. Consequently, since the majority of people have access to the Internet, online dating such as eHarmony is used for a variety of purposes: meeting new people, sharing an interest, exchanging information, among others. Are we better off using traditional dating? Could this media platform isolate us or could online dating help each individual to meet his or her soul mate? The following essay will highlight the functions of this particular mass media. Does it create psychological illiteracy? I would describe the public versus private mass communication pros and cons and how online dating fit
My brother’s anecdote proves that social media does not contain a sense of closeness. If anything, social media causes a decline in physical interpersonal interaction. In public settings people may become socially awkward. The sad fact is that society accepts this practice, and new forms of social media are constantly
Aside from meeting people on your normal sites like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, there are now special sites that have been around for some time now that are geared solely towards online dating. These sites have even went as far as breaking up the different types of dating sites by religion, ethnicity, style, and so much more. Online dating is no longer seen as a last result in today’s society with social media (James, 2015). It is because of things like online
Today, in the world of Snapchat, Tinder, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of it, social media dating can mean many different things or nothing at all. Social media and dating can be as complicated as, are we dating if we hook up? If we “talk”
When online dating first became a thing in the early 2000’s, most Americans were not fond of the idea and it was almost frowned upon. Everyday technology is advancing and changing Americans lives rapidly. Over the years as people have grown with technology, online dating has become much more popular and is a common practice in modern America. In fact, five percent of married couples or people in dedicated relationships say they met their significant other online. Online dating has revolutionized the way Americans meet other people looking for a relationship. With a source like a dating website or app to bring millions of single people together into one pool, people have so many more dating options then they would without this source.
Everyday throughout our lives we interact with many different people. Naturally we develop relationships with these individuals and whether they become acquaintances or intimate friends this people all have some kind of impact on our lives. This cycle of developing, cultivating, and sustaining or ending these relationships continues everyday for our entire lives, and as a result many different theories have been developed to describe just how a complete stranger can become a lifelong friend. One in particular, Iwrin Altman and Dalmas Taylor’s social penetration theory, states that “the idea that relationships become more intimate over time when partners disclose more and more information about themselves.” This break down of the complex process that we go through every day of our lives definitely rings true in a large part of interpersonal communication. However, it is not without flaws. In this paper I will attempt to further explain Altman and Taylor 's theory, share some research supporting it, while also providing a critique of their work.
The way people view human interaction will determine whether they go online to seek relationships or not. Jaron Lanier, a founder of the field of virtual reality, made a similar point about social networking sites, describing them as dehumanizing and fostering shallow interactions and a “fakey-fakey social life” (Kahn, 2011, p. 46). Relationships are most satisfying when partners adopt a communal orientation, responding mutually to each other’s needs and preferences (Clark et al., 2010), rather than an exchange orientation, in which benefits and costs are assessed on an
As more people become dependent on the internet, fewer are forming relationships with the people they meet face to face every day. According to a study conducted by USA Today, more than one third of relationships are formed online compared to the traditional offline dating. The internet has given people the pleasure of communicating with others who they would have less likely met under circumstances including perceived “out-group” status or geographical distances. Social information processing theory explains how humans partake in theses interactions with other people without the use of nonverbal cues and succeed in developing and flourishing in relationships strictly through computer-based
Before the World Wide Web was invented in 1990, the preeminent way to interact with people and meet romantic partners was through face-to-face interaction. These days, there are countless websites, social media platforms and applications, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tinder, and match.com, where someone can meet and mingle with other single people. According to Gibbs, Ellison and Lai (2010), “More than 10 million Americans participate in online dating by maintaining memberships or profiles on at least one dating website.” (p. 71) The internet is an amazing resource that gives individuals the ability to share information with millions of people at the same time (Bazarova & Choi, 2014), and it has become a socially acceptable place for people to meet their significant other. (Kang & Hoffman, 2011) It is said that people prefer computer-mediated communication over face-to-face communication to find a romantic partner because of a that lack of face-to-face interaction, (Kang & Hoffman, 2011) Self-disclosure can be defined as the amount of information that one shares with another person, it is essential to the development of relationships, including close friendships, parent-child relationships, and romantic relationships. (Rupees, 2015) Higher levels of self-disclosure have been found to occur more frequently in computer-mediated communication than in face-to-face communication, (Jiang, Bazarova, & Hancock, 2011) and the high levels of self disclosure in online communication has
In our society today a person can often look around a room of people and see nothing but the top of their heads, along with their eyes staring down at lit up screen filled with tremendous possibilities. One thing you doubtfully will view is everyone surrounding talking to each other making kinship with in their proximity. Instead, making connections through their phones. In the article written by Nancy Jo Sales “Tinder and the Dawn of the“Dating Apocalypse””, Sales speaks of the dating culture of the current twenty-first century and her views on how online dating has affected thus creating a sort of “Dating Apocalypse”. In the culture of intimacy may it be consciously or subconsciously people are seeking love and security in their lives through hookups and technological dating cites such as Tinder.
In today's post-modern society, dating practices are both vast and varied. People meet their romantic partners in any number of locations including at work, at the bar, and increasingly, on the Internet. Online dating has become very popular over the past decade, and according to a study done in Washington DC, over 74% of single Internet users in the US have taken part in at least one online dating-related activity. In addition, this study found that 15% of American adults (that's 30 million people) say that they know someone who has been in a long-term relationship with a partner they met online (Biever, 2006).
When in fact, social media applications has been developed to make one’s life connection to one another much easier than before; since it removes the monotony of getting to close and personal with the person they are conversing online. For example, application such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and Tinder had made all of this possible in the palm of one’s hand. Notably, Tinder has been very prolific in the domain of online dating because it supposedly made dating a bit easier to
In general, online relationships contain much weaker ties than face-to-face relationships (Vitak, 2008). Social networking sites such as Facebook offer users a convenient method for maintaining a large number of weak ties. While maintenance of strong ties typically requires significant commitments of time and energy, weak ties maybe managed