Monday, February 11, 2008

Is social networking causing a decline in face-to-face human interaction?

Yes, social networking is causing a decline in face-to-face human interaction. The face-to-face human interaction is reckoned as an idle paradigm of meeting of minds. It is the warrantor of authenticity as one can look at the conversational partner and search for tacit signs of truthfulness or falsehood. Face-to-face conversation demands complex forms of behavior called 'phatic' functions by semiologists. But, this entire phatic signs can be short-circuited in computer conferencing or online networking. The criterion codifications for opening and closing conversations are discarded in social networking. The term “Social Networking” pertains to a category of internet applications that facilitates one to contact friends, business partners, or other individuals together using a miscellany tool. Face-to-face networking brings forth keener results than just interacting with someone online, but the ease of online social networking makes the technique quite popular. Today, the term "social networking" has turned to be more popular with the buzzword Maker, to let in online relationships with people, that he never met face-to-face. “Networking online is fantastic! E-mail and web sites allow networkers the chance to share information in a quick, efficient and easy manner while building lasting relationships,” says Melissa.B, Data groomer, Intel.
Social networking is a way of plugging in through versatile social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds. Social networking or conferencing resembles letter writing, where the phatic functions are quite weak. The melioration in technology makes rapid exchanges of message possible. The contour of the social network facilitates one to decide a network’s utility to its individual. A group of mortals with associations to other social universes is probably having access to a broader orbit of information. It is fuller for individual success to have associations to a multifarious networks rather than many connections within a single network. Similarly, people can exert influence or act as brokers amongst their social networks by bridging two networks that are not straightaway linked (called filling social holes).

Social Networking is one of various new technologies that have created a whole new grade of identity. Electronic bulletin boards, dialogue systems and computer conferences exhibit their users to each other via an explicit written language. The social subject is altered by the abstraction of extremely curbed forms of self-presentation. But the uttermost form of self-definition takes place in 'Chatting' systems, where an individual gain dates through an interchange of pseudonymous messages. It is a synergistic kind of classified personal advertisement. Chatting systems, like 'hacking', are freakish social creations that are attached to the mainstream of technological innovation on which they reckon. Chatting or Computer conferences produce electronically social environments; every bit of it is as complex as the constructions that process the social activities in face-to-face confrontations. Other examples of social networking are Tribe.net, LinkedIn & OpenBC. They are the Internet social network service, used mostly for business connections in 160 countries. LinkedIn is used to find jobs, people and business opportunities suggested by the user's direct contacts, or by individuals linked to their contacts. More than 1,000 alumni and professional organizations use LinkedIn for Groups, members-only areas on LinkedIn that facilitate networking among their members. Friendster, a privately owned Internet social network, is based on the Circle of Friends technique for networking individuals in virtual communities and demonstrates the small world phenomenon. Every user creates an online identity by filling out a questionnaire profile and uploading a user picture, and then delimitates a gallery of friends, and the service then incorporates these galleries, allowing a user to search through a list of their friends their friends' friends, and so on.


The urban environment is progressively webbing with composite telecommunications networks. Studies showed that a large part of emerging technology implicates alterations in the designs of communication patterns in both human-to-human and human-to-machine interaction, but the impingement of technology on the transmutation of spaces has affected the communication patterns as well. People using a network like meetup.com, Ryze.com or 60secondNetworking.com has better advantages because those services allow one to network online as well as in person. “60secondnetworking.com has helped me establish relationships with it industry professionals. Being new to the Seattle area, I found 60secondnetworking.com to be easy to use and full of information directed towards technology-minded and career-focused professionals. The networking events are well attended and represent not only it professionals but other Seattle industries allowing for cross-industry networking, “says Nancy.D, Business manager, Microsoft.
60secondNetworking.com is slowly changing the face of social networking being online and an individual can get the best of both worlds. The 60 second network assists the individuals’ to exercise extreme networking by aiding him in meeting a lot of people in a selected venue or online. One only needs to subscribe to the database and start searching instantly for contacts, and leads for businesses or referrals. The cost is on a per event basis. ‘Dakotta’ is the founder of 60 second networking. By using such type of social networking, one can have fun, remember about referrals and partnerships, help out as many people as one can, can reach to recruiters to in search of jobs, find additional resources, bring Plenty of Business Cards etc. Thus Jeremy.l, Sr. recruiter, Microsoft, says that “60secondnetworking makes it not only easy, but a fun way to meet candidates and colleagues!”

"Our hypothesis is there are more cases where you're building shallow relationships, leading to an overall decline in feeling of connection to other people," said Robert Kraut, a social psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon's Human Computer Interaction Institute. Research conjectured that relationships retained over long distance, without face-to-face contact do not end up in rendering the kind of support and reciprocality that typically impart to a sense of psychological security and felicity. The social features like e-mail, internet chat and other forms of networking are used more and these participants do not interact with the family members or their circle of friends to a greater extent. These directly correspond to the large amount of time they spend online. While studying the social and psychological effects of Internet users, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University detected that masses that pass even a few hours a week online undergo higher degrees of depression and loneliness than they would have if they utilized the computer network less often. Internet use seemed to induce a decline in psychological well-being of the individual. Robert Kraut thus concluded that “the subjects exhibited wide variations in all three measured effects, and while the net effects were not large, they were statistically significant in demonstrating deterioration of social and psychological life”

Today there are over 200 social networking sites with millions of registrars, linking friends, business professionals, and recruiters with employees and more. The social networking should aim at using computing technologies as catalysts rather than substitutes for human relationships. Social Networks caters to a composite and multi-perspective view on the communication world of a single individual. Social networking communities have upgraded the user profile to suit more like a user homepage that exhibits a very rich and contextual set of information. Social Networks is a lively, speedy iteration, almost rapid enough to callback spoken conversation. The rush with which messages are commuted makes it conceivable to use computer communications to supervise a project, or teach a class, or encounter new people. With practice, the computerized intermediation of such pursuits comes to be a normal part of daily life. Several social scientists made an intense study and brought about more beneficial effects of social networking but the increased use of the Internet, cause decline in normal levels of social involvement. It seemed to cause a decline in the psychological well-being of an individual, converting an individual’s lifestyle pattern, interpersonal contacts and social interaction in the social environment.

Shyamolima Mutsuddi
SEO & Content Writer

3 comments:

ekhlas said...

Nice article. Truly facebook is reducing our face to face interaction. People are living in virtual world.

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Unknown said...

very nice blog. read it properly everyday.

Lucia Stone said...

Amazing, this is a great post !