Blog Post #6: Social Media and Interpersonal Relationships 6/12/22
I was first introduced to the world of virtual relationships in the sixth grade when I heard that the Media Specialist in my school moved to our area after meeting and eventually marrying a science teacher at our local high school. A sixth-grade brain was thinking "how weird." My 22-year-old brain, however, is now thinking "good for them."
Personally, I have never begun or ended a relationship on social media, but I do use it to maintain them. Social media provides a special convenience for adults to maintain relationships begun at an earlier age, where the parties have literally moved, and occasional physical proximity is no longer possible. It's just a simple way of keeping in touch. Furthermore, for busy adults, especially now that many are working from home, social media provides a means to connect to others in a romantic way. Again, good for them.
For young people, in my opinion, it's a double-edged sword. As social beings, humans tend to crave some connection with others, and social media is a convenient tool for anxious, shy, lonely, and/or isolated teens. In these cases, social media's expediency in promoting connection to others may be a life saver, but it can also send someone down a dark and dirty rabbit hole. Innocence can be lost on social media because, in the virtual world, we cannot fully know the other person across from the screen nor can we fully trust them. We can't determine whether both parties are emotionally invested in the same way either. That's one of the major constraints of its usage. Hence, one party or both parties are always vulnerable.
I certainly see the value of social media as keeping us connected, and, if that means beginning an interpersonal relationship, that's even better for those parties. Loneliness, isolation, anxiety are all barriers in staying connected with other humans and social media provides the means to assuage some of those mitigating factors.
Ending an interpersonal relationship on social media, on the other hand, is a different story though. Ending a relationship is complete and finite and it can be devastating for the receiving end. If that social media relationship progressed beyond the virtual world into the physical world, and then was severed using the virtual world, that could cause emotional destruction. Even if the relationship didn't evolve into the physical world, the end to the virtual relationship could be upsetting. Unfortunately, in our world today that blends the physical and the virtual into a new reality, social media is an expedient form of communication. The bottom line is there are no rules; there are no controls. Social media is an amazing tool, but like any instrument in the toolbox, it can be dangerous.
by: Caleigh Mei T. Tan Social media is an indispensable part of modern society, but have you ever stopped to think of how exactly this new c