How Media is affecting modern day relationships.
Relationships have greatly evolved over history. During most of history, people have practiced arranged marriages with the purpose of continuing the family lines and having cultural advantages. Over time, they have been influenced by various types of media and transformed relationships to be based on love. It makes us wonder is love is a society based idea or one we were bound to discover.
All over social media, we see couples couples couples. Celebrities, teenagers, politicians, and characters. We use this as a construct for what our relationships should look like and base them off of the ones we see on TV. It is a form of the bandwagon tactic or trying to be included because it is what all the “cool” people are doing.
Has media had a positive or negative affect on our relationships? Do we base what our relationships should look like and/or feel like on what we see around us? Has forms of social media made our relationships less intimate? Is this a bad thing?
Social media has certainly made communication easier. By not talking face to face, people can be more thoughtful about their words because they do not have to talk in person. They say 70% of conversation is based off of facial gestures which is eliminated during internet messaging. This means that when we talk to loved ones over the internet, our conversations with them are not as profound perhaps as they would be in person. Social media takes out some of the emotion from conversation and makes it easier.
However, this is completely necessary in many situations. Media nowadays spreads ideas and words much faster over greater distances. People can reach each other in farther places. This is a great thing because people who could not be together normally now can. It is a worthy consequence over no communication at all.
How has love fit is to all of this?
It has definitely been added to our relationships on a whole new level. In our culture, people are getting married because they want to and not for their family. It is still true in some parts of the world that people are in arranged marriages, however, most of these places have little connection to the sorts of media that we experience, either by choice or by environmental factors. This leads me to believe that the media has highly influenced our society's marriages and relationships.
Yes, it is possible that the media has dramatically changed the way we come to love one another, but that doesn't mean our relationships are any less profound than those 200 years ago. Maybe it has opened us up to what we really need. Love might be a society drive concept, yes, but nobody seems to have a problem with it because it is bringing them more happiness than distress. Social media takes some emotion out of conversation, but it also lets people connect that otherwise would not. In my opinion, it has been a God sent for the world and it should be more accessible to those who do not have it.
This is the article that sparked my interest.
To ad onto your point about not seeing facial expressions costing us emotion, I think that not being able to hear the voice of the person who is speaking also removes some feeling from the conversation. The words "I love you" are less personal, and are also more likely to be overused when people are talking over text. Though I am very glad we have the technology, I do think it can cause some problems in a relationship.
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