Natalie Barletta – Special to the Southern News
The rise of the internet has made everything easier. Suddenly, it became a place for you to do everything under the sun. It is our encyclopedia, our shopping mall, and our entertainment center. All that can be done, with a click of a mouse.
Along with the convenience of shopping and entertainment, staying in touch has become easier too. With the rise of social networking, we can talk to our friends who live across town or across the world all with a click of a mouse. We can use email, Facebook, and Twitter, amongst all other things to spread information around the world. The best part about all of this is that it’s free and easy, along as you know how to use a computer. However, one may wonder what this easy accessibility can do to a relationship whether romantic or platonic.
Social networking sites can effect real life relationships in many ways, both positive and negative. For starters, some people can meet their significant other using a social networking site. The internet is always a good place for the wallflowers in the world, because then they can type vs. actually having to talk. For some, that might take off a bit of the pressure, and therefore prompt them to be themselves instead of clamming up. This could also apply to those people that you want to get to know better in your classes, and of course high school friends spread across the miles. I use Facebook to talk to my friends who have moved away and I don’t get to see on a daily or even monthly basis.
However, sometimes it can also effect the people that you actually know. Since the information that’s available for us at our fingertips, we can access it whenever we want to basically. We can talk to them as much as possible as well, and guess what, it’s free.
There are some downsides to having this sort of convenience to talk to your friends and see what they are up to. For starters, we can see things and not know the story that lies underneath them. It’s easier to jump to a conclusion when you see something on a social site such as Twitter, than if you actually heard it from the actual person themselves. Since there is less information, more conclusions can be drawn from it.
When it comes to posting about significant others, people often hold back, or don’t even bother bringing it to the virtual world. “I feel like as long as you leave the social media out of your relationship for the most part. I mean tweeting about it positively once in a while or posting a cute picture to Instagram is fine but you can’t let it take over, and you definitely need to keep what should be private off of there, whether fighting or intimate stuff. Then it can’t hurt your relationship”, says Amy Baraquin, a junior at SCSU.
I believe that social networking, like most things in life, should be taken in moderation. It can be used for good things, like keeping you in touch with your friends, and helping you get to know the people that you otherwise wouldn’t have the courage to converse with in real life. But too much can be a bad thing. Having a balance of social networking can be good for your virtual and actual life.
