Technologies Effect on Modern Day Realationships

Andrae Walker

ENC 1101

Prof. Campbell

10.5.15

Technologies Effect on Modern Day Relationships

Technology has completely changed the way we live today; 30 years ago the most innovative inventions were the internet, disposable contact lenses, and the cell phone as big as a shoe. Today we have touch screen cell phones with fingerprint home buttons and HD cameras. Along with the internet came social media starting with BBS but more prominently AOL Inc. popular in the 90’s it was an online messaging program. Later founded in 2002, Myspace came along from there Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. One by one social media networks were introduced and made popular by youth and adults not only changing the way we socialize but the way we date.

Most relationships today are started by a DM (direct message) or a like on someone’s picture and the right combination of emoticons, or emojis, can get you a date with whomever you choose. Millions of people your age with your same interests are at your fingertips and you meet people you never would have met in real life otherwise. Social media makes it so that we don’t have to be completely ourselves; it’s easy to magnify our strengths and diminish our weaknesses to make ourselves more appealing. Over time it has made face to face courting almost impossible, we feel crippled without the barrier of a cell phone to mask our insecurities. As a generation we have become less genuine in the way we talk to people because we’ve shortened our vocabulary to accommodate the lack of time we pretend to have, now it’s too much to say what are you doing or where are you. If we continue to limit ourselves our children will be left with the scraps of what true romance is seeing as most of our love stories will start with the internet.

It’s not only young adults using this method of dating though, it has seem to have reached out to the older folks too. With sites like Christian Mingle and Farmers Meet, adults have now gotten into the wretched trap of online dating. It’s basically like Facebook but specifically for dating. It seems as though this generation isn’t the only one in the trend of hiding behind the internet. So adults would even go as far as to disguise themselves and pretend to be a younger person or a catfish as we would say. They would start direct messaging someone that they find attractive to try to get to know them better. Sometimes they would even arrange to try and meet up with the younger person which can lead up to total disaster.

Social media and online dating isn’t all that bad despite some of the points I recently made. Some individuals could actually find their soulmate online. The internet hosts billions of people so there has to be someone out there for everyone; it’s