Does technology help or hinder social interaction?

WRITTEN WITH THE HELP OF PHONG

Man is a social animal, evolution has made us so. Why? In the past, the world was a dangerous place where every man needed and extra eye or hand to aid survival. In a social unit, they can share their resources and help each other survive the harsh environment that they live in. As time passed, writing progressed from pictures to symbols and characters. Communication was primarily through verbal and written means. As time progressed, we opened up a whole new world of mobile communication through SMS, emails, MMS, cyber platforms like MMORPGs, Friendster or Facebook! People from all across the world can communicate with each other without meeting up personally and yet know how each other looks like, what are their preferences, age, birthday, etc.

But are these communication methods helping or destroying peoples’ social skills? There are 2 prevailing view regarding technology (the internet) and social relationships. The first theory is old and conservative (mostly created in the 1990s), it proposes that no form of stable or genuine relationship can be formed online and the Internet only served to atomize society, isolating the individuals. In contrast, the modern view was predominantly advanced by Walther, with this theory of the hyper-peronal effects claiming that the Internet and its communication tools actually help to create a lot of affordances to facilitate communication and socialization. More recently, Dmitri Williams also suggests that online games like MMORPGs actually have characteristics of a "third place", which is a sociological concept advanced by Ray Oldenburg to refer to sites of socialization, with the first place being home and second place, school or work.

So this bring out another question, where is the border between virtual versus reality? Yes, MMORPGs, Facebook and Friendster are just social platforms online that are virtual, regardless of how they look. But then, the relationships there are real because real friendships are made, often offline and many become couples. But this line is blurred when people have virtual marriages with ceremonies and attendees (other gamers who are their friends). Facebook and Friendster are based on cyberspace, so their communities are cyber-based, yet their relationships are real in the sense that today A insults B on Facebook, tomorrow, B can kill A for it. That is the real thing. Also, the cyber world has become a platform for people to share their “fantasies” that they are unable to enact in the real world due to social norms and rules- virtual rape, virtual bullying, etc...

Thanks to the technology, disagreements can be displayed using cowardly methods such as cc-ing every “important” person in the company in a bid to “cover ka-cheng”. Either that or cowardly attacks on people’s personal blogs such as leaving hostile messages on tag boards, or making their enemies’ blog links public on community blogs. I’m sure you have heard of stories about husbands or wives telling each other “I want a divorce, I’m leaving you” through emails or sms because they lack the courage to do it face to face.

I’ve also noted that many teenagers today are slaves to technology. It has gotten so bad that many of them are incapable of interpersonal interaction face to face. When I mean incapable, I don’t mean that they are unable to make friends, I mean they are unable to speak their minds, nor are they capable of conveying their opinions through verbal (choice of words) or non-verbal (i.e. body language) means.

Despite this, the internet has been a good place for people to socialize and interact with others from other parts of the world, socioeconomic groups, languages, race and religion. On my end, I’ve gotten to know new people- some good some bad, but every one of them left me a precious lesson on differences in people and their beliefs. I just find that with the ready availability of emails, I hate to call people up or meet them face to face. I prefer long emails that leave me a record of what transpired. =)