W8. Task 6. Disagreements no. 4 Isolation

This article discusses the idea that prolonged use of the Internet by teenagers will result in them becoming isolated from other people, with the research conducted providing strong evidence to the contrary, as it showed that the majority of the time adolescents spent online was spent talking to people they knew offline, about friends and gossip. This therefore implies that online relationships are used to maintain and to build on existing relationships, rather than for identity play and this is something I would agree with.

My criticism of this would be the date that the data was gathered. In 2004, although only five years ago, personally my internet use was much different, perhaps because of my age but also because of the technology available. It is possible that now, after the use of social networking sites such as facebook and myspace has really taken off, and it has therefore become easier to connect with strangers, maybe the evolution of the technology has made it easier for teenagers to spend more of their time online. As a result it is possible that teenagers could become isolated from IRL friends and be more likely to have more online social interactions with strangers as it is more socially acceptable now.

Article: Gross, E.F. (2004) “Adolescent Internet use: What we expect, what teens report” Applied Developmental Psychology, Vol. 25 (Issue 6), P.633-649

W8. Task 6. Disagreements no. 2 Youth blogging

A criticism I have of my second article is that lack of acknowledgement of the risks associated with online communities. The article seems to suggest that creating a blog and then creating a network of blogs with online peers to form a community is nothing but beneficial to the user, suggesting that it allows them to “foster peer group relationships.” However, there is little to no acknowledgement of the problems that this could create, such as the trust you put into others in the community.

The article uses the statistic that 92% of blog users provide a name on their blog and 54% of bloggers provide more detailed information about themselves such as age, occupation or geographical location on the home page of their blogs. (Herring et al., 2004a) exclusively as evidence for the argument that blogs create a sense of empowerment as you are revealing your thoughts and feelings without a mask. Nowhere is there any recognition of the problems that this could bring in terms of sharing very specific information about you with an infinite amount of people online and the trust that they are therefore placing in the hands of strangers.

Article Huffaker, D.A. and Calvert S.L. (2005) “Gender, identity, and language use in teenage blogs” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol. 10 (Issue 2), http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue2/huffaker.html [Accessed 11/03/09]

Online and offline relationships

Within Lister page 170 a study by Andrea Barker is outlined. She asked couples who met online questions about their relationship finding that often their relationship was every bit as strong as “normal” and couples who had initially met in real life. She also reported similarities in the patterns of early relationship formation. For example, they cited perceiving someone as having a good sense of humour as one of the initial attractions to them as well as perceiving them to have lots in common with them. However, there were also specifically online traits which played a role in attraction, for example the style in which they wrote their responses and the time they took to reply.

Whilst this study indicates that there are few differences between online and offline relationships, I would argue that fundamentally there are subtle differences which can be significant in the end. Particularly in romantic relationships, there are intangible things which can make two people work or not, and these are impossible to gauge online, let alone through the time it takes them to respond to a message. I would agree that initially meeting on a forum about a common interest would result in you having something in common, the things which you really need to form a longer relationship, let alone a marriage as in Andrea’s study, are impossible to gauge via exclusively online communication. Ultimately I would say that online relationships should be handled with caution given the numerous stories of people meeting online and then being taken from their families, as with the case of the Cleethorpes schoolgirl who was taken to France by someone whom she met on the Internet. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/humber/7843907.stm)