#2) Discouragement of the Perception of Intimacy

In many aspects in my life, I have often seen the perception of intimacy being discouraged in many regards. When trying to understand social distance, which is the perceived lack of intimacy between two or more individuals, I immediately think of the advancement in technology and the common uses of email, text-messaging, and Myspace/Facebook. These advancements in technology have proven to be a very efficient and useful tool of communication. However, many people do not see the serious implications that it has on one's behavior or the way it greatly affects relationships in negative ways.

We can better understand this by looking at George Simmel's theory of social distance, which is the perceived lack of intimacy between two or more individuals. It also talks about how these new types of communication technologies encourage or discourage the perception of intimacy in relationships. He uses ideas such as letter writing vs. phone calls vs. email vs. instant messaging vs. face to face and so on.

Communication varies dramatically among two individuals when comparing for example, a Facebook conversation to one that occurs face-to-face. We notice how it seems so much easier and efficient to use technology to communicate to another person via email, or ironically blogger; or some other way, but when studying how much time kids/youth/adults spend conveying messages online, it causes some serious psychological issues. With the continuing growth of technology, we can only guess that more advanced and efficient technological resources will be invented, thus perpetuating the never-ending cycle of indirect communication with another human being.

Obviously the internet is very effective and important to anyone and everyone, where you have the ability to buy & sell items/communicate with anyone/work for an online organization & earn money without having to step one foot outside your home. I fear that in the future we are looking at a world of almost complete technological dependence. With this age of technology, we begin to lose the idea of communication among beings, in which our future generations will miss out on the meaning of interpersonal communication effecting the way they act, react, behave, and understand the most important thing of existence: communication.

God Bless! ~JTL