Technology's Effect on Interpersonal Relationships and Experiences

For my paper, I choose to create my own kind of question: How does technology (like the ones seen in "Digital Nation") negatively impact interpersonal relationships and life experiences?

Technology’s Effect on Interpersonal Relationships and Experiences

    We live in a world in which facebook friends have come to supplant real-life friends, we update our twitters more than we text our friends, and we vent to our tumblrs, online journals, and blogs more than we vent to our loved ones. The development and popularity of sites such as these were inevitable, given that since the earliest days of industrialization in the 19th century, Earth’s most brilliant humans have continually been coming up with new means and methods of technology that have consistently made things easier for us. We can be more efficient in our careers, work, studies, and even social lives due to the various mediums of complex, innovative technology that exists today. Despite all this, I have begun to question how positive and effective the creation of new technologies really is: at one point does it all become too much? Does this world that we live in, in which so much of what we do is rooted in technology, diminish our real-life experiences and interpersonal relationships? My viewing of the Frontline documentary, “Digital Nation,” definitely amplified these questions and others like them in my mind, as particular parts of the documentary examined interpersonal interaction via technology. 

    The part of the documentary that struck me the most was the segment in which its creator, Douglas Rushkoff, learned more about the concept known as “Second Life” in which people literally create avatars that look frighteningly like themselves and interact in places frighteningly similar to places that exist in our actual world. In the documentary, the creator enters an IBM branch that uses Second Life in the majority of its business endeavors and affairs. Viewers learn that employees hold conferences with clients and coworkers halfway around the world without ever meeting them in person and have become accustomed to conducting all business matters through this site. This concept entirely baffled and disturbed me. As a big believer in live, interpersonal interaction as the most effective means of communication, I find it hard to believe that work and ideas can be communicated as effectively through a site such as Second Life. In person, when you meet with a client or coworker to discuss ideas and issues, it is much easier to receive and take to heart feedback and criticism. In being able to see peoples’ facial expressions, body language, and even hearing certain inflection in their voices, we are able to, in my opinion, respond and converse in a more natural and genuine manner. A site such as Second Life does not mirror such real life interaction, despite its legitimate-looking, elaborate settings and avatar-people. Seeing a digital conference room on a computer screen does not provide the same sensual experience as being in one. Seeing digital avatars, however humanlike they may be, does not provide the same emotions and feelings as meeting with people in-person. It’s simply not real enough. One author from a site called Helium.com, focusing on communication in relationships, says “As we converse behind monitors and flip screens, we quickly lose the art of effective communication. The kind of interpersonal communication that can only be obtained with body language, eye contact and a firm hand shake." I think that existence of sites such as Second Life will down the line negatively affect human communication abilities, and even affect and mess around with the way we see the world. At what point does the already gradually fading line between real life and the digital world disappear completely? Will we eventually just become lazier than we already are and be able to sit on our couches all day and simply perform all interactions with the possession of a keypad and computer screen? This thought terrifies me.

    “Digital Nation” also covers the culture that surrounds popular video games such as World of Warcraft, through which gamers can interact with one another without ever having met in person. The video showed us footage from a gaming convention that brought all diehard World of Warcrafters together to both play the game together and meet in person for what in some cases was the first time ever. Creators of the documentary even interviewed couples that had met through World of Warcraft online communities that have since fallen in love. This segment of the documentary played with my emotions, making me feel sympathetic towards but also happy for these gamers simultaneously. It is sad that, for these gamers, the friendships they formed through their computers and video game consoles represent some of the most real relationships in their lives. Many of them, like one girl in the video admits, spend every waking moment on the computer playing games and the friends that play with them.  It’s tough to say if gamers retreat to their games as a result of feeling excluded from the outside world or if they feel excluded from the outside world because they identify so strongly with the games they play so religiously. According to a study conducted by Constance Steinkuehler and Dmitri Williams, examining the effects of MMOs (massively multiplayer online games), on gamers, such “contemporary media are a root cause for the decline of civic and social life in the United States rather than a mechanism for its maintenance.”

    Although I myself have never tried out “Second Life” or been involved in a gaming community like the World of Warcrafters depicted in the documentary, I have experienced the online world in other ways, and maintain the same feelings towards it as those I feel towards Second Life and gaming communities. Websites like facebook and twitter, which most of us use, also affect interpersonal relationships. On facebook, I have a lot of friends who I’ve talked to maybe once or twice in my life, or, in some cases, never at all. We know everything about everyone on our friends list, yet we don’t really know some of them at all. We know who their significant others are because of the relationship feed, know where to find them at particular moments of the day, and know what kind of mood they are in, yet we have never had an in-person conversation with them. Facebook, in some cases, even becomes a game that involves great strategy on behalf of some, as it seems as though people put up particular statuses just so certain people will see them and comment on them. That is the biggest problem with social networking sites--so much of what we do on them is for attention. We try to portray a certain kind of self to the internet world on our facebook, twitters, blogs, etc., but only if people know us in person, in the real world, do they really know who we are and how we really feel and act. 

    Though I’ve tried my hardest to antagonize technology within this paper, the inevitable confession that we all must make is that it does have many positive attributes. Without the continued development of technology, we wouldn’t be able to keep in touch with people as easily and would take a lot more time to accomplish tasks such as researching, writing, and typing. The thing about technology, though, is that it is often so addicting that we must be careful that we do not ignore the beautiful outside world waiting to be explored. No matter how much we can learn or obtain from technology, I think that we learn most by experiencing the world and all the different places and cultural opportunities it has to offer. It is things that we see in the world and people that we encounter in this world that shapes who we are and the way we view society. If we ignore this because of the efficiency and convenience of doing everything online through specific websites, we will not lead as fulfilled lives nor will we have as well-developed, solid, interpersonal relationships. 

Works Cited:

http://www.helium.com/items/203551-technologys-influence-on-interpersonal-communication

http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue4/steinkuehler.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/