Like Real World Bonding Analysis

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At first glance, the gadgets and gizmos that today’s society has so readily integrated into our personal lives may be considered a godsend. It’s fast working, requires minimal effort to use, and does a lot of our daily tasks for us. Another one of the main advantages of possessing such technology is that we have the ability to connect with friends all over the globe. While this constant connection may seem beneficial, a large gap lies between simply connecting and actually communicating. Ultimately, the time we spend absorbed in our virtual worlds damages our ability to talk to our friends face to face. We lose social skills as we use social media. In the mysterious murder of friendship, technology is the main suspect.

Lauren Tarshis’ article, …show more content…

Yes, it is true that social media is more than just liking someone’s photos. With current technology, people have the capability of conveying feelings with their friends through only a few brief text messages. While this form of communication is quick and easy, it is not enough to maintain a true friendship. Larry Rosen cites a study within his New York Times piece, “Connecting Virtually Isn’t Like Real World Bonding”, that provides substantial evidence to support this claim. It states “...that while empathy can be dispensed in the virtual world, it is only one-sixth as effective in making the recipient feel socially supported compared with empathy offered in the real world”. In times of need, people do not want to be messaged a sad face emoji when a hug would six times more effective. The book Created for Understanding by Robert Shaw reveals that words only relay seven percent of a message’s full meaning. Tone and body language, things that cannot be seen in texts, make up the other ninety-three percent. According to Rosen and leading psychologists, social capital (the benefit we get from human interaction) can be defined in two ways: bonding and bridging. Bonding is most commonly associated with interactions between real world friends. Bonding’s more superficial counterpart, bridging, is mostly provided by virtual

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