Affair Sites: Essay: How Online Networks Are Breaking Apart Human Bonds Via Virtual Validation
In our perpetually connected age, digital connectivity has transformed into the vital conduit we interact with people in our lives.
source: framer
What emerged as simple tools for preserving relationships has evolved into something alarmingly more toxic.
The Performance Culture
Absolutely the most crushing quality of social media is how it nurtures perpetual judgment.
Every viewing through our timelines buries us with skillfully designed refined showcases of other people’s lives.
We see marvelous expeditions, incredible relationships, extraordinary victories, and perfect home lives.
Simultaneously, our unfiltered existence feel mediocre by reference.
This endless bombardment to impossible benchmarks generates unachievable objectives for our friendship circles.
The Dopamine Casino
Networking platforms are systematically programmed to possess our mental energy.
Every feature is psychologically optimized to condition our habits.
Bottomless content, constant stimulation, and individualized data integrate systems to construct chronic engagement.
The continuous stimulation reorganizes our thought processes to depend on fast feedback.
In instances we’re not witnessing persistent online validation, we face agitated, unstimulated, or separated.
The Intimacy Blocker
Most frighteningly is how screen-mediated contact hinders true emotional intimacy.
True emotional intimacy necessitates committed attention, honesty, and uninterrupted time together.
Digital platforms cultivates impediments to every necessary component.
During precious time, regular disruptions drag our focus away from those present truly accessible.
Instead of heartfelt talks, we understand we’re mechanically swiping through online material.
In place of communicating our honest opinions and emotions, we get entangled with displaying our occasions for virtual display.
The Approval Dependency
Digital platforms has revolutionized the way we desire appreciation and personal value.
At one time we established our individual value from authentic victories, psychological development, and valuable friendships, we now acknowledge we’re intensely desiring virtual recognition.
Endorsement symbols, input, forwards, and links grow into our significant criteria for measuring our individual value.
This hollow acceptance evolves into relentless because it’s unreliable, momentary, and ultimately hollow.
Varying from meaningful milestones or real friendships, electronic acknowledgment imparts only momentary pleasure.
The Opinion Reinforcement Loop
Algorithmic feed curators are built to deliver to us news that echoes our established thinking.
This builds ideological bubbles where we’re persistently delivered to concepts that bolsters what we existing hold.
Alongside this, alternative stances are excluded, creating an chronically dividing societal framework.
This fracturing infiltrates our romantic partnerships, developing atypical quantities of animosity between companions, kin, and relationship partners.
The Achievement Race
Social media has escalated our basic impulse to judge ourselves to our social circle.
What previously was constrained to weighing ourselves to school classmates has magnified to involve countless unknown people globally.
STATS ABOUT DIVORCES/RELATIONSHIPS
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage-divorce.htm
https://www.familyrelationships.gov.au/separation
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1441&context=studentpub