Through the Internet,
the format of relationships has drastically changed. Rather than having
face-to-face conversations, going on dates, and having long distance and
lengthy telephone calls, the internet, and social media websites specifically
have allowed for society to become lazy. Typing words into a screen, where
there is no legitimate human interaction makes it easy for relationships to
become more distant, and not as raw and natural as real-life relationships.
As a member of the
generation that uses the Internet as a daily necessity, I appreciate all that
social media has to offer me. Because I am from New Hampshire, without social
media it would be extremely difficult for me to keep in contact with my friends
and family from back home. This is beneficial for all of my friends who have
different class schedules, my parents who have different work schedules, and
people that I want to stay connected to from all over the country. Making
telephone calls to every person I want to talk to would be impossible, so this
creates a function ability that I could not imagine my life without. For this
purpose the social media is an exceptional tool that mediates my relationships
for pure purposes. There is a difference in my opinion however of maintaining
preexisting relationships, and creating and developing new ones.
When I meet someone
new, it is almost guaranteed that I will be awkward, shy, and will indubitably
walk away from the conversation regretting something that I said. While I
appreciate the fact that social media would help me prevent some of the
inevitable embarrassment, the internet helps me be someone I’m not rather than
propelling the person that I am. Part of what makes me so unique is the fact
that when I am with a group of people I say exactly what I want, with no
filter. Whether I realize I shouldn’t be saying it or not, it comes out in my
speech, and people are either accepting of it or they are not, but in that
moment, they know exactly who I am. If I use social media to have a
conversation, I will stare at the chat box and run through countless possible
scenarios. I will try to be witty, or intelligent. I will use the backspace
button time and time again because I want whatever I say to be perfect, but in
the real world, this is not possible.
Just recently, I met
someone new and after our in-person conversation that surprisingly went very
well, we added each other on Facebook. When he sent me a message later that
day, I became anxious, nervous, and I instantly had to message another one of
my friends to live stream me advice through the entire conversation. Rather
than saying the first statement that would come to my mind, I would ask my
friend, we would analyze the situation, and we would reshape what I was thinking
to make it sound better. Hopefully the boy never realized why it took me several
minutes to come up with such simple messages.
Although the
interactions have been continuing both in person and through social media, the
boy directly told me that I sound different when we talk online than when we
talk in person. I realized that this is probably by no means a compliment. No
one wants to talk to someone who is so different in different situations. I
realized that I use social media as a crutch to ease my stress of actual
conversation. Social media allows me to stop thinking for myself, and to use
others, and to use time and strategy to have a conversation, rather than having
an authentic interaction with another human being. Typing into a computer screen
should not cause as much stress as it does, and it should not inhibit on my
true identity and character the way that it does when I talk to someone new.
The Internet and social
media helps us create false identities. Whether we realize it or not, we put on
a façade, and the social media websites help us to do so. People post photos of
themselves that have been edited; they add information that makes them sound
intelligent, or funny, or any characteristics that they deem acceptable for the
world to see. People show the world the person that they want to be, or how
they see themselves rather than who they truly are. It is unhealthy to base
relationships based on these false or exaggerated accounts of ourselves rather
than being human, and being our own odd, individualized selves. Baym confronts
the issue of identity, in his essay, and while I do not believe that everyone intentionally
edits their online version of themselves, it is inevitable to morph your
identity to be more attractive to the Internet world. Baym believes that the
different windows on our computers allow people to be “thinking about the self as
a multiple, distributed system,” rather than a single entity (Personal
Connections in the Digital Age).
Although the Internet
and social media provide great strengths in maintaining relationships and having
simple interactions, it limits and even prohibits growing and fostering new
relationships where personal identity can become lost in translation. It is
important to acknowledge that different identities are impossible to eliminate
while performing versatile tasks on the Internet, but to stay true to your
identity when handling relationships. Relationships with other human beings are
essential, and having conversations through social media is a barrier that can
only be avoided by communicating in person rather than through a screen. Your
personal identity is the only thing that is truly yours, so it is important to
not let the social media or the Internet take that power and morph your personality
into that of anyone else, or of a different, untrue version of yourself.
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