Digital Age: Revolutionizing Communication & Socialization - Essay Sample

Introduction

In the past two decades, the world has seen a tremendous upraise of a new digital era, which has ushered in the use of social media for communication and socialization. The world is becoming more connected, as opposed to the mid-20th century, where communication and socialization were limited to a set of fewer services that took ages before obtaining the desired feedback. However, the advancement in technology has propelled the world into a new digital age, characterized by the advancement of social media, and increased socialization than before. Social media has drastically changed the way people all over the world interact and communicate.

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New relationships are emerging courtesy of social media. However, despite the significant role played by social media in uniting and fostering relationships through social media, there is a devastating development of social relationships created over social media platforms, which has led to the harming of people’s relationships with one another. While the world has had a fair piece of rapid global connection, social media’s harm on people’s relationships with one another is one the horizon.

What Goes Behind Making Friendship

Every relationship begins with a personal understanding of each other, which later transitions to learning the other party’s behavior, likes, dreams, worries, dislikes, and greatest fears. Therefore, these early concepts form the basis of a stable relationship. Moreover, the degree of friendship is fostered by the nature of support from friends, who knows more about the behaviors of the other person. Therefore, these variables contribute to developing a healthy relationship, that can be guaranteed from the experience and support of friends.

According to Diehl et al. (2016), a friendship that grows into a mature relationship requires commitment and support from friends. The traditional concept of making friendship has remained to be undisputed when it comes to fostering and making friendships. However, the use of social media plays a different role when it comes to the making of friendship, as most of the preliminary rules and regulations necessary for making friendships are not observed.

How Social Media is Cutting the Long Route of Relationship Development

According to the research conducted by Ghaddar et al., (2019), social media has been associated with over 46% of newly formed relationships. While the number is promising to rise as social media swings into action, the number of social media formed relationships has been on the horizon, indicating, lack of commitment or lack of trust in the social media fostered relationships.

One of the reasons behind the turmoil in social media fostered relationships is the increased lack of trust between the members. As Lin (2018) outlined, most of the partners who end up engaging in a relationship through social media are quick to retrogress their decisions of being committed to the relationship. Lack of trust during the early stages of building the relationship are not fully explored or brought to light. Historical behaviors and characters of most of the partners remain concealed, which affects the other partner in the relationship. Therefore, these shortcuts, which catalyze the rapid development of relationships, prove to be the leading causes of the relationship downside.

The increased demand for social media relationship has been widely cartelized by the degree of connection the platforms have made over the past years. However, while most of the social media site has widely focused on warning about the nature and extent of social media content being unrealistic or being manipulated to increase the possibility of attracting more views, most of the users have not internalized this concept, as they have been subjected to be victims of their innocence.

Images on social media appear to be unrealistic, thanks to the concept of filtering, and the use of advanced software such as Photoshop, to improve the photos. Therefore, the use of manipulated photos remains as one of the concepts behind attracting new members in a relationship. As a result, this creates the first incident of operating under a hidden identity, that serves as a blanket cover in the brewing of the relationship. Therefore, the discovery of the truth about one’s identity reduces the possibility of the relationship developing.

Why Relationships Cannot Begin On Social Media

The growth and development of relationships on social media are familiar and more comfortable to start. However, it is hard for the relationships to mature, which limits the chances of social media becoming the right environment to nature and grow new relationships (Lin, 2018). A long-term relationship is built on top of a logical series of strategic planning that united the mutual development of the two parties. However, the lack of utilizing strategic concepts leads to the crumbling of most of the social media established relationships.

According to Diehl et al., (2016), social media has become a part of our daily and routine life, a world that our phones have dominated, especially when it comes to the fostering of relationships. However, the consequences of utilizing the notion of building relationships on social media have devastating effects on the participants. The use of social media insulates the lack of learning and developing competent observation skills that are used to learn the behaviors of a person.

While the use of filtered images may be welcoming to attract new relationships, little is displayed about the real character of the partners. Therefore, it may be a challenging factor for most young individuals fascinated by developing relationships using social media since those who are new may not have the capacity to read the social intelligence of a person before they commit to the new relationship.

According to Ghaddar et al. (2019), “engaging in a new relationship, calls for security and protection, which helps nature or develop a strong relationship.” While most of the traditional means of developing new relationships, security has been considered as one of the considerations, social media relationships tend to neglect this concept, which limits the development of a relationship to its maturity. According to the report compiled by Diehl et al., (2016), 37% of domestic violence reported cases in the US were from online relationships, where the victims had no historical backgrounds about the perpetrators. Therefore, social media fostered relationships are highly insecure, especially where no extensive background information is not offered.

Conclusion

While social media remains a necessary tool in uniting and socialization, relationships created over the social media hare remained in constant doubts, due to the increased statistics on dead social media relationships. Even though most people are skeptical and reluctant to question the limitations of this relationship, many still indulge, only to regret their decision. For those who are lucky enough not to become domestic violence victims from social media relationships, have to suffer massive heartbreaks, due to lack of transparency, and lack of sufficient social intelligence to learn their partners during the early stages of the relationship. While social media remains a critical tool of socialization, its growth and development are affecting many relationships.

References

Diehl, T., Weeks, B. E., & Gil de Zuniga, H. (2016). Political persuasion on social media: Tracing direct and indirect effects of news use and social interaction. new media & society, 18(9), 1875-1895.doi.10.1177/1461444815616224

Ghaddar, A., Hamadani, M., & Yamout, F. (2019). Effects of social media on relationships in Lebanon: A study case for Lebanon. Politics of the Machine Beirut 2019 2, 48-53. https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/POM19.8

Lin, R. (2018). Silver lining of envy on social media? The relationships between post content, envy type, and purchase intentions. Internet Research.doi.10.1108/IntR-05-2017-0203/full/html