In 2012, I was sitting on the shinkansen in Tokyo Japan. I was on my way to work and as I finally settled down in a vacant seat, I looked up and what I saw astonished me. Everyone and I mean everyone was on their smart phones. (texting, surfing the web, watching a video etc.) From 60 year old grandma to children as young as elementary kids were starring at their phone. Fast forward to 2015, I was visiting a very busy doctor’s office with my mother and as I open the door to the clinic everyone in the waiting room was either on their Smartphone or tablet. No one was speaking to each other and was totally absorbed by their own virtual world. Yes, I admit I am at times guilty of this as well but I am still pretty “old fashioned” and enjoy an occasional conversation with a stranger. I remember thinking to myself, “how can any of this be healthy?” All humans are social creatures. (Aronson 2007) As social animals, we all need social relationships and feel a sense of belongingness. In other words, the feeling of sense of community. The advancement of technology has robbed us from proximity. Having the accessibility or nearness to develop and building interpersonal liking to another individual in the real world. (Schneider) As I recently read a relationship article teaching couples rules and things to be aware of when texting. The article suggest that many couples may be using “texting” as their main source of communication instead of face to face.
Although a new community has developed in the virtual world it has decreased our real world social contact and possibly decreases our overall sense of well being. Re-shaping our values and philosophical goals as a community. A couple of years ago in Taiwan a truck were transporting a rhinoceros from one location to the other. For some reason, the rhino either jumped or fell off the truck resulting in severe injury. The rhinoceros was obviously bleeding and was crying in pain but nobody was helping or doing anything but taking pictures or recording. In the video that someone later posted on YouTube, some people were even laughing at the poor animal. Yes, I know it’s not every day that we see a rhinoceros on the side of the street but come on!
The feeling of belongingness in the virtual world is slowing taking over the real world. I think we will see many changes and reshaping of societies, communities and individual interaction. Personally I am a bit scared and uncertain of how we are all going to deal and cope with this change but I know we will all eventually adapt.
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., and Coutts, L. M. (Eds.) (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications
Schneider, Gruman, and Coutts (2012) cited research conducted by Putnam (1995) that suggested that there has been a decline in certain prosocial behaviors. Specifically such behaviors as civic engagement and social participation. I think this speaks to the issue at the core of your post. In many ways, virtual communities have interfered with our ability to establish a positive sense of community in real life. In order to have a strong sense of community, one must feel a sense of membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). I would imagine that virtual communities create a situation of divided loyalties. People may feel as if they have a stronger sense of integration and fulfillment of needs in their real life communities, but a stronger sense of membership online. If a person is unable to fully develop a sense of community in person due to conflicting virtual memberships, this could lead to personal conflict as well as a lack of civic engagement and social participation similar to what you discussed in your post.
References
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.