Internet and Everyday Life - Article Example

Internet and Everyday Life The Internet has brought a revolutionary change in the society on both individual and collective levels ever since its advent. People use the Internet for all sorts of purposes, ranging from social networking and online money-making to online dating and cybersex. Internet-mediated activities of communication and information have redefined modernity and introduced a whole new experience of living in a virtual environment. One such activity that has had tremendous impact on people’s notions, behaviors, and practices related to romance and love-making in everyday life is online dating. Everyday life encompasses all social activities and relations including both codified and unofficial practices. Today, more than ever before, the practices and relations typically associated with everyday life like love, relationship, comradeship, and friendship, have become open, fluid, and dispersed across space and time via the Internet (Burkitt, 2004). As the world’s systems have increasingly transited from the factual to the virtual environment, online dating has defined new dimensions and techniques of relationship, and the society bears its fruits as well as consequences. People use social media for online dating in everyday life for a variety of causes and in different circumstances that lead them to different consequences. Social media feels like a suitable avenue for dating because people are in control of how much they can reveal about themselves. Unlike real life situations, where people feel hesitant to approach one another and overtly ask for relationship, online dating makes the participants feel more at ease making overt requests and suggestions because these are platforms established for the union of like-minded people specifically looking for relationship development. Nevertheless, there are many participants who use social media for online dating just for recreational purposes. These participants approach online dating as a pastime and enjoyable activity. Some people feel driven to use social media for online dating because they have a history of traumatic relationships in the past and thus feel too shy and hesitant to build real relationships in real life. In such circumstances, online dating provides a substitute for such relationships as such participants can engage virtually, psychologically, and emotionally in a romantic experience. The consequences of online dating in everyday life are, more often than not, unfavorable for the participants. The minimum harm the participants cause to themselves is wastage of time. Users of online dating sites adopt different approaches to online dating in the private and public discourses. Online dating when surrounded by other people is availed more like a leisure activity meant for recreation and pastime. However, people are more serious in looking for their soul-mates on online dating sites in private. This difference of attitude is grounded in their unshaken confidence in the traditional way of dating compared to online dating that would still take more time to gain complete confidence of the users. One difference between online dating and traditional way of dating is that many people start interaction as anonymous users online unlike in traditional dating where they cannot hide their identities from the partners However, people start to reveal their true information online as their understanding grows with their online partners. Online dating sites are distinct and different from other popular online for a like social network sites because online dating sites provide strangers with a platform where lack of prior relationship, nonverbal cues, and lack of shared physical context complicate the process of relationship development and increase the uncertainty about others. Ever since the introduction of Internet, public discourse about online dating has contained concerns regarding the security and privacy of the participants, dangers of interacting with strangers online, cyber stalking, and sexual predators. While computer-mediated communication (CMC) provides the participants to be selective in their self-presentation, the control over self-presentation can also lead to concerns about deception and misrepresentation. Online dating participants are vulnerable to serious consequences of online misrepresentation, which can be particularly harmful and emotionally demanding for long-term romantic partners. “Unlike other CMC contexts such as chat rooms or online role-playing games, in which anonymity or pseudonymity is acceptable or even expected, the anticipation of future face-to-face interaction inherent in online dating provides motivation for reducing uncertainty about the identity of potential relational partners through self-disclosure and other communication strategies” (Gibbs, Ellison, and Lai, 2010, p. 71). Internet has played a role in establishing new sex taste cultures. Attwood (2007) demonstrated how new forms of pornography are being introduced via Internet to project sexual display as a form of community building, self-presentation, and recreation. Websites playing a pivotal role in the development of new sex taste cultures include but are not limited to SuicideGirls, and altporn site. A major element contributing to the development of a participatory taste culture manifested in these websites and magazines like Nerve devoted to ‘smart smut’ is softcore sexual display. People today have a plethora of information regarding creative and innovative ways of spicing up their sex lives, the safe and unsafe sex behaviors, and the impact of the frequency and nature of love-making on the general physiological, psychological, and emotional health. Social networking and sexting is promoting problematic sexual behaviors among people (Weiss and Samenow, 2010). Availability of such information from all sorts of reliable and unreliable sources to the users is risky for them in a multitude of ways. For example, many articles available online suggest that masturbation is not only a safe, but is also a healthy activity that should be done quite frequently whereas there are other articles that warn the readers about the physiological, emotional, and psychological risks of masturbation. Cybersex is one of the most explicit ways of expressing as well as exploring one’s identity as well as individuality. Uninterrupted and unregulated interaction between the users and online mediums of information enables the users to take charge and make bold decisions regarding their own health whose damages may be irreparable. For example, many users feel drawn to get tattooed, inspired by the tattooed pornstars; a decision that they cannot reverse even if they regret later. In addition that, people use cybersex and porn websites to explore and learn more about their own sexual identity. Many people are confused between whether they are straight or gay or bisexual. Their drive to watch all kinds of porn is partly rooted in their curiosity to establish their own sexual identity. “Much of the existing SEM [sexually explicit media] …deviate to some extent from the prevailing sexual script and show a hedonistic sexuality detached from the love script” (Kvalem et al., 2014). Most consumers of cybersex experience an evolution of their own sexual orientation and sexual identity as they engage with cybersex more. Online dating has evolved as an increasingly popular way of dating over the years. Traditionally, people used to start the relationship by meeting with each other in person in the everyday life. Face-to-face meeting in real life situations was a norm. In the initial years of the advent of Internet in general and particularly as online dating sites were opening, people were quite skeptical about the reliability of information provided by the strangers online. Accordingly, online dating was limited to a pastime activity with no serious expectations associated with it. However, over the passage of time, people’s trust in online dating has increased. This can, in part, be attributed to certain websites that provided fair services to the clients. As marriage bureaus transited from the traditional brick-and-mortar businesses to online dating websites, people trusting them for their reliability also changed their perception of online dating websites. Today, online dating has become quite common throughout the community as a social norm. This change of people’s perception of online dating can also be partly attributed to the controls established by the online dating websites. For example, many online dating websites do not allow posting or sharing of pictures containing explicit nudity. Users making such attempts are blocked and disallowed continuation of their use of the online dating websites. Hundreds of thousands of people all over the world build relationships on these online dating websites that lead them to marriage. Communities’ growing trust in online dating websites can be estimated from the fact that “love is now a big business worth an annual $4 billion internationally and growing at 70 per cent a year – with high-tech venture capitalists, psychologists and software engineers reaping vast rewards” (Smith 2013). One benefit that online dating websites particularly offer in comparison to the traditional way of dating is that users have a much wider pool of interested like-minded people available to them on online dating websites. They are able to select their partners from other ethnicities, cultures, and origins without being affected by the geographical constraints. The effect of the Internet on everyday life cannot be overemphasized. Online dating has introduced new relationship varieties and dimensions that have had mixed effects on the users. People engage in cybersex to explore their own sexual identity. Nevertheless, online dating has evolved as a respectable and reputable way of dating and gained acceptance and approval of the communities at large. Just like millions of brick-and-mortar businesses have transformed into online businesses, relationships developed online transpire into strong relationships like marriage in real life. Reliability of the information shared, and hence, identity confirmation, plays a pivotal role in the success of online dating. Online dating today has become a multibillion dollar industry and is expected to grow more in the future. References: Attwood, F. (2007). No money shot? Commerce, Pornography, and New Sex Taste Cultures. Sexualities. 10(4), 441-456. Burkitt, I. (2004). The time and space of everyday life. Cultural Studies. 18(2-3), 211-227. Gibbs, J. L., Ellison, N. B., and Lai, C. H. (2010). First comes love, then comes Google: An investigation of uncertainty reduction strategies and self-disclosure in online dating. Communication Research, 38(1), 70-100. Kvalem, I. L., Traeen, B., Lewin, B., and Stulhofer, A. (2014). Self-perceived effects of Internet pornography use, genital appearance satisfaction, and sexual self-esteem among young Scandanavian adults. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychological Research on Cyberspace. 8(4). Smith, J. L. (2013, June 8). Why online love is more likely to last. The Telegraph. Retrieved from www.telegraph.co.uk. Weiss, R., and Samenow, C. P. (2010). Editorial: Smartphones, social networking, sexting and problematic sexual behaviors – a call for research. Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity. 17, 241-246. Read More