For our last Blog we were given the directive of exploring the question of the impact on social media and our social interaction.  Are we becoming less socially interactive because of social media?  I would have to say yes and no.  I do not have a face book account, I do not have a twitter account, but I’m still connected and social. But social media has changed the way that we,as a society and as social scientist, define interaction.  Now, we must include the virtual in any discussion regarding “groups” or “being  interactive”.”  Sociologist now maintain that interactions no longer require face to face contact to be defined as such.  Now, we have broadened the definition to include interactions that happen in cyberspace.

But does this mean we are somehow losing our social edge? I would say not really.  There are still rules to interacting in cyberspace and I certainly feel just as connected talking to my family via Skype as I do receiving a card or talking to them on the phone.  And sometimes it’s just easier to interact in the virtual world, but I would not argue that this means we are less social.  I would argue that this new technology might change the way that we interact and might expand our definition of what it means to be social. But I do not believe we are becoming LESS social because of it…

We have access to so much information, we can send greetings around the world in a matter of second, we can find and reconnect with people we thought we might never see again.  This doesn’t sound like it  turning us into less social creatures, if anything–it becomes another way for us to overextend ourselves and to waste time.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 at 8:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.