Is the age of the internet enabling social interaction or hindering it?

“Their [teenagers] online participation is not eccentric; it is entirely normal, even expected.”

The Internet is the latest in a series of technological breakthroughs in interpersonal communication. The Internet has fast become a natural background to our everyday life. The power of the World Wide Web affords people the opportunity to overcome great distances to communicate with others almost instantaneously. Children in this present age now grow up with the Internet. It is a fixture that’s been relevant all their lives and they’ve come to take it for granted.

With all its positive advancements, the Internet has also been vilified as a powerful new tool. To many, the internet is a dark bottomless pit where people spend hours holed away from their family and friends. In her piece on digital citizenship, Roxanne Missingham highlights how, “Several scholars have contended that Internet communication is an impoverished and sterile form of social exchange compared to traditional face-to-face interactions, and will therefore produce negative outcomes (loneliness and depression) for its users as well as weaken neighborhood and community ties.”

The Internet has a unique, even transformative quality as a communication channel, including the ability to easily link with others who have similar interests, values, and beliefs. This way of positively viewing dialogue on the web can be illustrated by the post on Opposing Views entitled, The Internet & Its Impact on Global Communication, “Others believe that the Internet affords a new and different avenue of social interaction that enables groups and relationships to form that otherwise would not be able to, thereby increasing and enhancing social connectivity.” The internet allows for the mode of conversation to be diverse and expansive, opening doors to deepen and further social interaction beyond the web, into actual reality.