calebbrown.id.au

I read an article titled Click here to give 'em the flick on SMH.

It's an article describing some research about how teenagers are playing out their relationships more and more online.

I found the following quote particularly sad. Despite desiring physical interaction teens still resort to a cheaper, unsatisfying, alternative online. While they now have "far greater access to networked publics" I think they also have greater access to the mall and movie theatres than I ever had when I was their age.

Boyd also observed that technology had made it far more common for relationships to be played out in cyberspace - over instant-messaging tools and MySpace - than in the real world.

"While physical interactions are deeply desired, they are typically quite rare," she said.

"Although the mall and move [sic] theater are still desired outtings [sic] for teen couples, many have far greater access to networked publics like MySpace than they do to unmediated publics."

This is my third and final post on the internet and relationships. See part 1 and part 2.

Kylie brought to my attention another negative aspect the internet plays in our relationships. While the internet makes it hard to have meaningful positive relationships with people (i.e. relationships where you are friendly towards each other) it makes negative relationships much easier (i.e. relationships that are about hurting the other). It is much easier to tear someone down, insult them or humiliate them over the internet.

I recommend you read part 1 first.

Computers seem to be mostly about adding files, editing files, browsing files, and sometimes deleting files. On the internet we can do the same thing - we browse sites, and if we're particularly savvy we might add and edit our own. Computers are all about managing data sets.

A sad reflection on the state of our society is that the internet is turning our relationships into data sets that we can manage.

Take myspace for example. I can go to someone's profile and click to add them as a friend. I can then edit my friends, or even delete my friends. Relationships are formed at the click of a button and ended in the same fashion. Because we can no longer have meaningful relationships with people in real life we go out and manipulate them like they're files on a computer.

How many of you have ever spent hours and hours chatting to someone on IM over a month or so, but ever time you meet them in person its like you don't even know each other?

Well I have. It was quite strange. One of the more eerie moments in my life. You stand there thinking in your mind of all the hours you've spent chatting, of all the different conversations, and how the way it felt then feels so much more different to now.

I think that experience, along with living with brothers that spend a lot of time in online gaming communities and my general observations, has led me to conclude that the internet is having a serious negative impact on human relationships. I think this is because of the problems the internet has when it comes to relating, combined with an increased amount of time being spent relating online.