Ever since social media platforms like mySpace, Facebook and Twitter crash landed into our lives, the debate over our online interaction vs our real-life experiences has been fiercely argued. For many, engaging in and communicating via social media is just another extension of our technological selves, another part of our daily routines. But for others, knowing everything about everyone’s lives is a brutal exercise in voyeurism and an impersonal way to engage in a relationship.

Our engagement (or not) with these platforms is often used as a spring board for psychologists, scientists, sociologists and so on, to study new social and cultural patterns of human interaction and dynamics.

Pew Research Center recently surveyed experts from a number of fields ranging from technology and web leaders to entrepreneurs and authors, regarding the future of social interaction. Though the general consensus was that social interaction in an online environment would have a positive impact on our lives, there were many arguments for and against.

Gervase Markham, of the Mozilla Foundation suggested human beings are becoming “shallower”. Markham argues that even though social media and online interactions will reduce human frictions, we will eventually know the mundanities of people’s lives more so than what’s going on at a deeper emotional level, thus resulting in “hundreds of acquaintances, but very few friends”.

Webby Awards founder, Tiffany Shlain, says the onset of social media will force us to become more and more disconnected with the people who are actually important to us – the people we spend time with in real-life – due to the “constant interruption” of online interaction. In a world where our lives are jam-packed and spare time is precious, Shlain seems to suggest we rely more and more on the convenience and accessibility of online communication.

“It will be the ultimate test to see if we can give our relationships what they truly need to grow. Time. Uninterrupted,” says Shlain

Where many respondents feared the death of real-life communication and deeper personal relationships, others embraced the emergence of social media and its impact on the ways in which it gives us more ways to communicate with our peers, helps us to “bridge our differences and increase understanding” and “allows an expansion to new cultural experiences”.

Mary Joyce (DigiActiv.org) acknowledges the ‘pros and cons’ paradox of online interaction:

“The internet’s effect on relationships is paradoxical. It strengthens our relationships with distant friends and relations through social networks…but may damage the relationships of those nearer to us as always-on technologies and applications eat into family and social time.”

What are your thoughts? Is our engagement with social media and the internet detrimental to our real-life relationships?

Read the full report: www.pewinternet.org

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