Internet relationships?

Does the Internet Enhance or Trivialize Relationships?

By Richard S. Rosenberg, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science

"The Changing Face of Romance in 2006 - UBC Reports"

We live in interesting times. It is possible to establish "relationships" with people around the world, in a variety of contexts and for a variety of purposes. I use the term relationship advisedly because in most cases the participants will never meet in person but will nevertheless often claim to have established deep and meaningful connections. My students vociferously argue that they have acquired real buddies all over the world. I raise my objections that never having met face to face must limit the depth of these encounters, given that human evolution has resulted in social animals, which need to touch, feel, see, and smell one another. They respond with rolling eyes, that I must be really out of touch.

Now the Internet does provide a variety of modalities to meet various needs of individuals and groups, such as email, listservs, chat rooms, instant messaging, online games, wikis, with more to come. To varying degrees people make connections, establish relations for social, political, economic, and other reasons. Are they deep, are they meaningful, can they evolve or are they doomed to be superficial? If text is the most common medium of communication, then deception and lying are the coin of the realm.

While most of the communication over the Internet is innocent, probably silly, and surely wasteful of time and energy, there are some harmful and dangerous encounters. The seduction of children by predators, which moves from online interactions to real world encounters with occasional horrible results, cannot be ignored. Leaving children unattended on the Internet is somewhat equivalent to leaving them unattended in the evening, downtown, in large cities. Aside from the potential dangers to children, the Internet, as is the case for most technologies offers benefits and harms; it depends on an educated and experienced clientele to realize those benefits and to avoid the possible harms.
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