PHI 103 w3 assignment : Does social media enhance or hinder interpersonal relationships?

The Media and Interpersonal Relationships 1

 Does social media enhance or hinder interpersonal relationships?

Introduction

Most people in the modern day society do agree that social media is affecting people’s daily interactions. First of all, all social media interactions take place through technology thereby cancelling physical or face to face interactions. At the same time, social media also builds animosity and envy among associates or friends. From these aspects, I believe social media hinders interpersonal relationships rather than enhancing it as most people tend to think (Kenrick, 2014).

Body

One of the ways through which social media hinders interpersonal relationships is that it promotes envy and jealousness among friends. In most cases, people tend to post their pictures or videos on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter when they are having fun. These photos and videos are usually aimed at informing their friends or followers how awesome their lives are. As some of their friends scroll down their social media pages and come across these pictures, they end up feeling miserable and envious of their friends with good lives. With such feelings in place, it is extremely difficult to develop a good interpersonal relationship with friends and associates. As a matter of fact, people who feel they have a miserable life are unlikely to associate themselves with their friends whom they think are happy in their lives (Kenrick, 2014).

One big mistake those using social media tend to make is confusing digital intimacy with the true intimacy. People are easily seduced by the ease in which they are able to connect with many people online thereby believing that these relationships are committed, intense and complete. At the end of the day, people end up alienating the people that really matters in their lives in pursuit for online relationships. Here, social media ends up destroying meaningful and important relationships are people struggle for the online relationships that are unreal and simply virtual. Most people tend to realize this very late when they find out that they are very lonely in real life despite having thousands and even millions of friends and followers on social media.

The other way in which social media hinders interpersonal relationships is that hinders face to face interactions. In order to develop an intimate relationship with each other, people need to physically interact with each other. Here, people are usually in a position to talk more about what is going on in their lives and their complete opinions on what is going on in the society. At the same time, physical interactions enable individuals to know each other well, especially on matters dealing with personalities. With social media in place, people are preferring to communicate through technology to face to face communication. Even during weekends and public holidays, most people prefer to stay indoors and talk to each other through texting and Facebooking. This aspect has in turn made it difficult for individuals to develop intimate interpersonal relationships.

Conclusion

As much as social media has enabled people to make thousands of new friends while at the same time keeping in touch with the old ones, it has also hindered interpersonal relationships. Thanks to social media, friends are feeling envious of each other. This is because of people’s nature posting their photos or videos when having fun, something that leads to their friends think they have happy lives thereby feeling envious jealous. At the same time, social media has also discouraged face to face communication. In addition, social media has led to people feeling lonely as they tend to confuse digital intimacy with the true intimacy. Therefore, we can conclude that social media hinders interpersonal relationships.

References