The most recent period has seen enormous advancements in technology. There is a lot of sociopolitical and economic growth going on. The era of knowledge has begun. The internet age has improved both communication and commerce. For businesses, consumers, the government, media, and the broader public, the Internet has taken on a central role. The internet represents the coming together of computers, communication, and industries; as a result, its use has a direct effect on our daily lives. Unfortunately, the majority of recent study has indicated that the internet has a negative impact on family relationships, which has an immediate impact on how people interact with one another. There has been extensive study on the risks of the internet; they range from addiction to pornography, isolation, loss of etiquette among others. Nowadays, people find it easier it substitute physical relationships with electronic relationships .people feel that they are connecting with others via the internet, too much electronic relating paradoxically engenders a sense of social isolation.
Apparently, the use of internet has very critical implications for businesses thereby compromising interpersonal relationships. It is important that people understand how the choices and decision made on internet use affect our livelihood. The social media is changing our relationship styles by, allowing us to connect to more people more rapidly and secondly it is easy to overestimate the level of intimacy our online relationships. Besides these, the internet has made more people susceptible to a sort of social media contagion effect. This implies that a person may start to adopt behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs from those within the social network, thereby people start comparing themselves with others. These may have either positive or adverse effect on them.
Connecting to more people
It is notable that social media enable people to connect with many people from diversified cultural and ethnic backgrounds. With increased connections and frequency of communication, one may have access to many more ideas and resource than ever before. These make people have increased knowledge and skills that can help them solve particular personal issues. These relationships may not be particularly intimate. But depending on the person of interest, it can extend the sphere of influence there making them have more influence (Wright).
Level of intimacy
In most occasions, people get it difficult to differentiate between digital privacy and their intimacy. People meet over the social media, open up to one another, and they end up in intimate relationships. The ease of connecting with other seduces us, and we begin to think that these relationships are more intense, more committed and more perfect that they are. An individual may end up alienating the people who populate their daily lives in the pursuit of intimacy with online friends. This is quite dangerous because one may end up losing touch with these people directly influencing their lives for the sake of delusional online relationships. People need to ensure that they are investing it for maximal benefit.
The contain effect
A researcher at the University of Chicago John Cacioppo demonstrated that loneliness is sometimes transmitted over the social media. His finding suggested that when the direct connection of a person is lonely, he/she is 52% more likely to be lonely. Even though this research is based on offline social networks, it has real implications on online social networking as well. For instance, if someone is moody while he/she is online on a social media, there is a likelihood that that mood will be transmitted to another person whom they are communicating with. It is evident that we are prone to social media moodiness, depending on whom we are interacting within paying attention to within our social networks. It is, therefore, it is important that people train themselves to monitor their influences and reaction as they become increasingly networked and involved with each other .loneliness is perceived as a social isolation.it is important that a person knows how many peers they can count on, work with and survive with. This implies that quality of relationships is what is related to whether someone feels isolated or satisfied with their relationships.
The internet directly affects this status by bringing in strange feeling and emotions. If a person is feeling lonely or angry somewhere, it follows that they will be highly sensitive to disconnection and would vigorously promote these feeling in the network. Ordinary courtesy and politeness are utilized when we make a face to face interaction, but it has been noticed that these aspects are either reduced or complete missing when it comes to online communications. People are mean and critical on the way they interact over the internet; there is a possibility that they would find it harder to do it in real life. This is a challenge since any negativity and bad behaviors have the probability to multiply a thousandfold.it is arguably clear that, even online conversations may not be private. They can result in lasting adverse consequences in unintended ways.
Comparison with others
This is another negative effect of the internet on family relationships. The continued use of internet exposes a person the different sorts of ideologies and beliefs. They make us feel diminished, and our failures are amplified because ewe ends up comparing ourselves to the people we interact with. There is this rush of so much information circulating on how people live, how they have mad eat in their lives or conducting their businesses. They provoke our feeling and make us see that we are unable to compete thus inferior individuals. If a person is not keen, he/she is likely to feel some pressure trying to demonstrate or perfect a particular persona. We all know that people are always watching us; the feeling will be that we have exchanged a real life rat race for an online one.
Looking it is advisable that we devise ways of limiting the way we interact; establish boundaries so that our relationships are not destroyed. Limiting time spent on social media is one way of minimizing these effects. Also monitoring our emotions and reactions over the internet is important these will create a perspective on our lives. If you become e aggravated or angry when online, it is better to withdraw from your computer of the device. There are some cases where a person will extend this aggravation to the people who are real surrounding him. There is no justification for h=behaving badly to your family, friends or any other person whom you are related just because you got this aggravation from the internet. There is a possibility that isolation will be created and the balance of life between n online life and the offline one. Understanding that there are greater people than you and lesser than you is also important. It is too easy to get caught up in vicarious experience of other people's lives at the expense of suffering you own.
It is a fact that technology is pervasive throughout our lives. And depending on how often we assess its precise in our relationships, we will be able to recognize how exactly it has impacted the way we interact those closes to us.it is exciting that we have technology to connect and interact with people across the world instantly. But it is possible that at the same time there might be a sense of disconnection. The biggest issue with the internet is that there is the inability to detect tone. It is quite difficult to know when someone is sarcastic, serious or funny. There no idea of the context surrounding the written words, this result to misunderstanding and miscommunications and assumptions (Kent).
Conclusion
There is the fear that the internet causes a multitude of social and psychological problems. Anomy people are being treated for internet addicting, gambling among others. However, we should not ignore that many benefits are associated when one is being involved on the web. The pervasive concern has been that the internet sucks people away, from in-person contact, fostering alienation and real world disconnection. Apparently, the internet has enhanced social networks providing social capital to help us get things done and make better decisions. Much of the interaction that happens on the web is with the same group of friends and family who are also contacted by a person. It is therefore argued that internet use has both negative, positive implications.
References
Kent, Michael. "Building dialogic relationships through the World Wide Web." Public relations review . (1998): 321-334.
Wright, Kevin B. "On-line relational maintenance strategies and perceptions of partners within exclusively internet-based and primarily internet-based relationships." Communication Studies (2004): 239-253.
