The Harms and Benefits of New Media on Interpersonal Relationships

I thought I would write on our two readings from last week and how they relate to interpersonal relationships. The first reading by Philip Brey was regarding the perceived benefits and harms of the Internet. Listed as one of the benefits and harms is the effect the Internet has on face-to-face communication and social relationships in general.

As a benefit the Internet aids in the ability to stay connected easily and inexpensively to anyone we wish across the world. It breaks down the barrier of distance. If we have a loved one over seas we can use webcams and instant messaging to see them and talk with them when normally we wouldn't have that opportunity without the Internet.

A perceived harm the Internet has on interpersonal relationships is the effect on face-to-face or offline relationships. People are spending more and more time online and thus putting less effort into face-to-face interaction. Also with online relationships you aren't using or seeing facial expressions, hand gestures, and voice tones and ques so you deteriorate your ability to use and read these key non-verbal ques in face-to-face interactions.

Our second reading, "Not a Hater, Just Keepin' it Real" by David Leonard had many interesting ideas but I only saw the colorblindness section that could relate to interpersonal relationships. Whether you choose to be colorblind (Not treat people different based on the color of their skin) or not, it is going to have a big affect on your interpersonal relationships. It's debated if it will have positive or negative affects. Depending on the situation, I think it could have either positive or negative affects on your social relationships. It will help you think of everybody as equals but also sometimes we do need to recognize there are minorities. Relating this back to new media, or specifically video games as discussed in the article, we can see most video games are produced with zero colorblindness. They blatantly show stereotypical images and actions from a variety of different ethnicities. These images in video games most likely directly effect the mindset of gamers in their own real life interpersonal relationships.