The Impact of the Internet and Social Media on the Ideas of Love and Relationships - Essay Example

The Impact of the Internet and Social Media on the Ideas of Love and Relationships By student’s name Course code+ name Professor’s name University name City, state Date of submission Introduction People have created different ways of communicating since the beginning of time. Such ways of communicating have evolved from the primitive methods of language and markings to the current technologies that include telephones and computers. Based on human communications, relationships are established. Before the development of technology as it is today, people developed relationships face to face. Such physical interaction allows a person to respond to communication through verbal and non-verbal cues (Homnack 2015, 3). However, with the coming of the internet, face to face communications are slowly becoming obsolete. While there is no doubt that the internet has led to improved and efficient communication and interactions between people from different places in the world, it has also improved the ability to search and find new people outside of one’s social circle (Rosenfield and Thomas 2012, 1). Such changes in the mode of communication and relationship between people have also led to the new concept of online dating and online relationships. Online dating has changed the way people develop and maintain interpersonal relationships. It has also changed how people make decisions regarding romantic partners. The internet has also led to the development of social media such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram among others that have changed the way people interact. Dating apps have also been developed to help people find their mates (Homnack 2015, 5). This essay will look at how the technology developments in the internet and social media have affected the way people relate and make decisions on romantic relationships. Emotional Capitalism and Internet Dating Eva Illouz states that the extensive research done on dating and divorce over the years has led to the understanding of how leisure and consumption put pressure on relationships. There is a link between people’s gender, their consumption and marriage and dating. These factors have an effect on the status and self-definitions of people (Illouz 1997, 26). The link can be seen in two important processes namely the romanticization of commodities and the commodification of romance. The romanticization of commodities refers to the process where commodities were accorded romantic aura in adverts and movies. The commodification of romance, on the other hand, refers to the ways in which romantic practices became defined as goods or technologies of leisure offered by the mass market (Illouz 1997, 26). These two processes explain the current trend where relationships and romance are viewed as commodities that can be easily acquired over the internet and social media sites. Eva Illouz continues with this position on the commodification of romance and introduces the concept of emotional capitalism. Illouz defines emotional capitalism as a culture where emotional and economic practices influence and shape each other resulting in a state where emotional life follows economic relations (Illouz 2007, 5). As a result, the commodification of emotions is evident in describing the link between emotions and economic relations. From this argument, it seems that market-based cultural practices shape interpersonal as well as emotional relationships while economic relationships are centered around interpersonal relationships. This forms the foundation for the new definitions of relationships and love as a result of the development of technology particularly the internet and social media. This has also eroded the traditional unitary sense of self and led to people having different identities. People present themselves with a particular identity depending on the person or people on the other end or the other screen. Self-Presentation and Identity As discussed above, times have changed from when conversations were made face-to-face to now when people are having conversations that are mediated by machines. Voice-mail and e-mail have made it easier for people to meet in computer chat room and also interact in virtual realities where they can satisfy their sexual desires with anonymous or virtual people. This has led to the development of the term Computer-Mediated Conversations (CMC). Through CMC media, people communicate through the computer as an intermediary (Weiss 2009, 1). This should be contrasted with the traditional way where there was no medium that mediated the communication between people. The rise of CMC media has also led to the development of a syntax of identity play where people use new identities, false identities or multiple identities as they prefer. As a result, people do not present their authentic self. People create false identities which depend on the image that you want to portray to the public. This is why, in social media sites and online dating apps, much emphasis is placed on the profile pictures which are used to judge a person’s attractiveness or whether they are a match. Traditionally, the notion of self was described as stable, fixed and unitary. However, today the computer and internet culture have created a self that is multiple and fragmented. On the internet, people experiment with different selves and different identities leading to the notion that the human body and the self should be seen from the perspective of computer systems. This means that we should think of ourselves like computers and the other people or humanity as a computer network. A central idea in this narrative is the fact the self is not bound to one specific identity. People are encouraged to think of themselves as flexible, fluid and decentralized (Mejias 2010, 1). The internet, therefore, has eroded the concept of authentic self and led to a decentralized and fragmented self. These multiple identities can only be supported the internet. This is because the traditional method of face-to-face communications cannot support multiple and false identities. The internet, on the other hand, can only be provided by multinational companies who develop the hardware and electricity that makes it all possible. The decentered self as a product of postmodern culture, therefore, is based on the concept of capitalism. Capitalism is obsessed with the latest and new which can be translated to the new and false identities formed and facilitated by electronic commodities (Mejias 2010, 1). Post-Modern Self and the Internet Self Traditionally, people defined themselves in terms of group membership such as class or religion rather than in terms of their unique characteristics. During this time the notion of romantic self-emerged where the true essence of an individual was considered to be hidden deep within the soul of an individual (Dumitrescu 2001, 1). In the late nineteenth century, the romantic self began to give its way to the logical entity. During this period the observable characteristics of a person became of concern. However, with the development of technology such as the coming of computers, phones, and the internet changed the way people understand themselves. This was as a result of the fact that these new technological devices gave access to a wide spectrum of people and institutions. This led to post-modernity self that challenges the notions of self that is natural, unified and hidden (Mejias 2010, 1). The post-modern self is fragmented and insists on multiple identities. The development of communication technologies has created new realms of experience such as virtual realities. The fact that people take part in roleplays, romance, and identity crisis in the online forums has led to the development of a sense of multiple self which results in the making of multiple new identities (Dumitrescu 2001, 2). The post-modern self has similar characteristics with the internet self. Both insist on a fragmented self as a result of human interaction with different technologies and people from various backgrounds. Further, they also promote individuals having multiple identities which they experiment on while using the different mediums of technology. However, the two have some differences. While both insist on a self that is fragmented, the internet self goes further to introduce the aspect of capitalism in defining self (Dumitrescu 2001, 3). The internet self extends to investing towards selling the image or identity that the person wants the public to know (Brown 2008, 5). This explains why people will pay to have their blogs or their social media profiles popularized. Further, it is from this system that the concept of dating apps emerges where users pay a fee to subscribe to websites or to purchase apps that help them search romantic partners. The Impact of the Internet and Social Media on Love and Relationships To understand the impact of the internet and social media on love and relationships, one must first appreciate the difficulty in mate selection. There are many people in the US who are single and seeking romantic partners. Of this number of people, an adult can only know a small number of the pool of the available single persons. Even in the locality, it would be hard to know all the available individuals unless such an area has a low population (Rosenfeld and Thomas 2012, 1). Due to these difficulties, the internet has gained importance over time as the place where people can find romantic partners. Research has proven that the number of people who have met their partners online has grown over time. For people who met their romantic partners in the 1990 and before none met their partners online. Between 1995 and 2005, there were approximately 22% couples who met their partners online. By 2009, the internet had become the third most likely way of meeting a romantic partner (Rosenfeld and Thomas 2012, 15). Today, the growth in the number of people using the internet and the declining role of friends in meeting romantic partners, the internet has become the most influential way that people, especially in the western countries, meet their romantic partners (Ansari and Klinenberg 2015, 1). The difficulties that arise in searching for a romantic partner as highlighted above have not been overstated. In the 2015 video Offline Dating by S. Abrahams, the director highlights the challenges that arise in trying to search for a romantic partner through face-to-face interaction. From the video, the likelihood of rejection is higher than that of finding a person who will accept your proposal. Such challenges and the fear of rejection have driven people to shift from focusing on the face-to-face search for romantic partners to the online searcher. The video also highlights the fact that although some young people are single, they are not willing to accept face-to-face proposals from other single people. Some of the characters in the video also highlight the fact that they have also subscribed to one or more dating apps. Social Media and Relationships The use of the internet and social media has led to the increase in the number of people using online dating apps. Once the internet became popular, time became more valuable. As a result, people spend more time on the internet than they do meeting other people physically. This has led to the need for instant gratification which has laid the foundation for dating applications such as Tinder (Homnack 2015, 3). Channel 4’s The Secret World of Tinder documentary describes how the advent of dating applications has changed the way people in Britain can meet potential partners whether for one drink, one night or for a long term relationship. According to the documentary, smartphones, and the internet have changed the way people meet their partners. One can look through the app and find out the person you like best and who is within your specified radius. The person then sends a picture of his/her and if they like it, then you can proceed to the next step. The documentary highlights how these apps have been used as avenues to satisfy lust and sexual urges rather than as avenues for people to find love. One of the users of the app interviewed in the documentary says that he has been able to sleep with 100 women since he started using the app. The interviewee also states that he is a self-diagnosed sex addict. This shows that these apps have changed people’s perspectives regarding relationships and romance. Most people using the apps are looking for sexual gratification or casual sex which has now been branded romance. The growing popularity of dating apps may suggest that the likelihood of meeting an attractive romantic partner is high (Ansari and Klinenberg 2015, 1). However, the ability of such apps to create successful and meaningful relationships is questionable. As a result, these apps have led to the rise of a younger generation that has placed more value on casual hooking up rather than on long-term and meaningful relationships (Homnack 2015, 5). Further, these apps have made people be superficially focused on looks and are reluctant to be themselves. This can be seen by the multiple identities that people have created in social media and dating apps. Online dating applications and social media have created new capabilities of enhanced self-presentation. People using online dating apps can create new identities meaning that their profiles can be dishonest or slightly enhanced. Since online dating apps put more emphasis on the physical appearance of other people from their profile photos, they provide a medium to create superior versions of themselves in regards to their personality, appearance, and social lives. As a result, these online dating apps are promoting dishonesty and the image that there is no need for honesty in romantic relationships (Homnack 2015, 13). Such dishonesty can lead to frustrations and possible violence for disappointed users. The effect has been widespread of casual relationships among young people and other users of these apps. In these apps, maintaining authenticity is not popular as more people prefer to conceal their real identity. In the 1998 film, You’ve Got Mail, two people are engaged in an online romance, but they do not know that they are business rivals. Both have screen names which are not their real names. Their interactions are conducted in an online chat room where there are no specifics as to who they are including their names, family connections or career. They exchange emails without knowing each other’s true identity. They also meet severally, but they do not notice each other as neither of them knows the other outside of their screen names. As the film ends, the only way that their relationship can grow is through building a face-to-face relationship. The film highlights the difficulties in having an online relationship and further highlights the fact that long-term relationships have to consist of face-to-face interactions. Online dating apps and social media have created the idea of the internet being a market. Online dating sites have been looked at from the perspective of market mechanisms (Laberge 2008, 3). The internet may form a market in romantic relationships since it facilitates meetings among people that engage in supply and demand with respect to finding romantic partners. Opportunity cost is an important aspect for economists in a market. In the dating world, face-to-face interactions are time-consuming and may take long before one is successful in their endeavor. Online dating cuts this cost such that people can easily find information about potential partners online and decide if they are a match with less effort. Such a position echoes the position held by Illouz on the commodification of romance where people look at romance a commodity that can be approached from an economic perspective (Illouz, 2007, 26). The result is the casual way that people have towards romantic relationships today. The effects of social media on relationships and love are similar to those of online dating. Research has shown that inappropriate social media activity such as through Facebook may put a negative strain on relationships whether face-to-face or online relationships (Farrugia 2013, 18). Increased usage of social media also leads to an increase in the level of jealousy among romantic partners. This can lead to pain and conflict due to such jealousy. Conclusion The internet and social media have completely changed the ideas of love and relationships. Traditionally, people met through face-to-face interactions while today, social interactions have been wiped out by the internet and social media. Today people are spending a lot of their time on social media and the internet than they do socializing with other people. As a result, people have ended up looking for romantic partners through the internet. This has led to the rise of online dating applications where people can create profiles and search for potential partners. However, these dating apps have changed the traditional view where people sought long-term relationships. The rise of the internet and social media as platforms for dating have led to the idea of casual relationships, especially among the youth. People are meeting just to have sex for one night and this, in the new dating world, has been regarded as the new definition of romance. Further, the Internet is being viewed as a market where people can find potential partners. This echoes the position held by Eva Illouz who states that emotions and economic relations are intertwined. Illouz looks at romance as being intertwined with economic practices. The idea of the internet as a market for romance supports the position held by Illouz. Through the internet, people are able to socialize and create networks with ease. It has also made it easy for people to search for potential romantic partners from a wide pool of single people. However, this has washed away the traditional view of romance and dating where people were interested in long-term relationships. Today romance has been commoditized and viewed as something that can be bought. References Ansari, A and Klinenberg, E 2015, Modern romance: An investigation, Penguin Group. Brown, M 2008, Students’ internet use and its effects on the quality of romantic relationships and face-to-face communication, Journal of History and Social Science, 3(1), 1-15. Dumitrescu, M, 2001, Modernism, post-modernism, and the question of identity, Department of Germanic Languages and Business Communication, ASE Bucharest. Farrugia, R 2013, Facebook and relationships: A study of how social media use is affecting long-term relationships, Rochester Institute of Technology. Homnack, A 2015, Online dating technology effects on interpersonal relationships, Santa Clara University. Illouz, E 1997, Constructing the romantic utopia, University of California Press. Illouz, E 2007, Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Laberge, M 2008, Is there a market in romantic relationships? Montreal Economic Institute. Mejias, U, 2010, Post-modernism, virtuality, globalization and the (fragmented) self, State University of New York. Rosenfeld, M and Thomas, R, 2012, Searching for a mate: The rise of the internet as a social intermediary, American Sociological Review, 77(4), 523-547. Weiss, D, 2009, The internet and self-identity, Available at: http://faculty.ycp.edu/~dweiss/research/Internet_and_Self_Identity.pdf [Accessed 21 December 2016] Read More

These factors have an effect on the status and self-definitions of people (Illouz 1997, 26). The link can be seen in two important processes namely the romanticization of commodities and the commodification of romance. The romanticization of commodities refers to the process where commodities were accorded romantic aura in adverts and movies. The commodification of romance, on the other hand, refers to the ways in which romantic practices became defined as goods or technologies of leisure offered by the mass market (Illouz 1997, 26).

These two processes explain the current trend where relationships and romance are viewed as commodities that can be easily acquired over the internet and social media sites. Eva Illouz continues with this position on the commodification of romance and introduces the concept of emotional capitalism. Illouz defines emotional capitalism as a culture where emotional and economic practices influence and shape each other resulting in a state where emotional life follows economic relations (Illouz 2007, 5).

As a result, the commodification of emotions is evident in describing the link between emotions and economic relations. From this argument, it seems that market-based cultural practices shape interpersonal as well as emotional relationships while economic relationships are centered around interpersonal relationships. This forms the foundation for the new definitions of relationships and love as a result of the development of technology particularly the internet and social media. This has also eroded the traditional unitary sense of self and led to people having different identities.

People present themselves with a particular identity depending on the person or people on the other end or the other screen. Self-Presentation and Identity As discussed above, times have changed from when conversations were made face-to-face to now when people are having conversations that are mediated by machines. Voice-mail and e-mail have made it easier for people to meet in computer chat room and also interact in virtual realities where they can satisfy their sexual desires with anonymous or virtual people.

This has led to the development of the term Computer-Mediated Conversations (CMC). Through CMC media, people communicate through the computer as an intermediary (Weiss 2009, 1). This should be contrasted with the traditional way where there was no medium that mediated the communication between people. The rise of CMC media has also led to the development of a syntax of identity play where people use new identities, false identities or multiple identities as they prefer. As a result, people do not present their authentic self.

People create false identities which depend on the image that you want to portray to the public. This is why, in social media sites and online dating apps, much emphasis is placed on the profile pictures which are used to judge a person’s attractiveness or whether they are a match. Traditionally, the notion of self was described as stable, fixed and unitary. However, today the computer and internet culture have created a self that is multiple and fragmented. On the internet, people experiment with different selves and different identities leading to the notion that the human body and the self should be seen from the perspective of computer systems.

This means that we should think of ourselves like computers and the other people or humanity as a computer network. A central idea in this narrative is the fact the self is not bound to one specific identity. People are encouraged to think of themselves as flexible, fluid and decentralized (Mejias 2010, 1). The internet, therefore, has eroded the concept of authentic self and led to a decentralized and fragmented self. These multiple identities can only be supported the internet. This is because the traditional method of face-to-face communications cannot support multiple and false identities.

The internet, on the other hand, can only be provided by multinational companies who develop the hardware and electricity that makes it all possible.

Read More