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Technology and Interpersonal Relationships
How have the Internet and cellular phones changed the way we communicate with one another?
Daniel Bouchard
Interpersonal Relationships
Summer 2006
Dr. Janet Dauray
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of technology, specifically the Internet and to an extent, cellular phones, have had on interpersonal relationships.
During the years before I met my wife, I had long wondered how I would meet someone who I was compatible with if I continued to travel in the same circles. I worked in a small school, in small town and had very little social life outside of my work related activities. I discovered the Internet dating scene. I found that here are many online sites that are exclusively aimed at helping people like me. A recent Google search rendered hundreds of types of dating sites. There are Jewish singles, religious dating, niche dating services, adult sites, professional based sites, speed dating, and then of course standard match maker style sites that attempt to match various criteria that a person gives for him/herself with another compatible person. I tried one of these sites in the winter of 2002 and within 2 months had met the women who I would eventually marry. We have discussed the possibility of meeting without the aid of the Internet and we cannot find a situation where we could have ever actually met! Our lives were headed in totally different directions and we happened to find each other during a very small window of possibility.
Our story is apparently not as uncommon as it would seem. The popular dating site eHarmony.com claims over 9000 marriages due to it scientific, personality survey that matches 29 different characteristics of each participant. This statistic has not, however, prevented Sarah and me from developing an intricate alternate story by which we met. We felt somewhat embarrassed by our method of meeting and created an elaborate hoax that is still being used today. Even though we have come clean with some people close to us, when people ask us how we met, we always go back to the default lie version. Why is that?
The Internet and other forms of technology have created a culture of isolation. People are becoming more comfortable sitting at home and sifting through various ve the pictures of people and choosing who fits best for them in bunches. It has almost become like a handful of darts: Throw them all and see which ones stick. The Cell phones have created a culture of: "Although I am here with you, I would rather talk to someone else,and this is more important that you are." I see many people, particularly parents with their children, talking on their phones and basically ignoring the child. This behavior can be suggesting to the child that they are not as important as whoever Mom or Dad is speaking with. However, the cell phone has created a connected society. There is virtually nowhere that people can't be reached: In the movies, in restaurants, at church or temple, on dates, in the class room, Some data shows that mobile phones have allowed people to stay in better contact with their family members; especially parents to children. Parents are buying phones for their children to keep tabs on their whereabouts, which is a perfectly valid theory in principle. However, is trust and honesty between parent and child being challenged by the fact that kids now have parent following them everywhere. Additionally, kids are actually You see it at every mall and school event in America, kids chatting to someone else on their phone. Where all these other people that they are talking to? What's wrong the perfectly fine looking kids that surround them? Could they be talking to the kid right next to them on the stoop?
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