Technology and the Development of Identity and the Nature of Personal Relationships

Technology and the Development of Identity and the Nature of Personal Relationships
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Technology and the Development of Identity and the Nature of Personal Relationships
Introduction
The explosion of social media platforms such as Facebook has revolutionized the way people relate to each other since the invention of the postal service that facilitated sending and receiving letters from family members and loved ones. These changes have also been seen in the manner in which influential figures portrayed their existence through paintings to display their lives in terms of social standing. The portraits offer the self-seeking and self-expression and display a sense of modesty, egotism, self-mockery, and self-aggrandizement (Rosen, 2007). Today, according to Rosen (2007), self-portraits have become digital and democratic. Instead of paintings that were made using paint, these portraits are made out of pixels and are posted on social media platforms such as Facebook. However, according to Dunbar (2010), this revolution has been characterized by unique attributes that are somewhat unexpected among users. While social media sites have allowed users to have thousands of followers, otherwise known as "friends", they are yet to find a way to expand the true social circle of human relationship. Rosen (2007) also contends that while social networking sites are at their infancy, there are a number of cultural influences, including in language, political, and learning institutions. Issues surrounding authenticity, privacy, identity, and community are yet to be understood and addressed when using these social sites. Dunbar (2010) argues that despite the many friends that people make on Facebook, they can only maintain a small circle of actual friends. This limitation is not caused by technology, but the biological and social nature of humans. Facebook, however, provides "a way to maintain those circles in a fractured, dynamic world." This paper argues that the growth of technology has had a negative impact on the development of identity and the nature of the personal relationship with the new generation of technology users.
The successes of social networking sites have been mainly to remove the constraints of time invested in relationships. According to Dunbar (2010), individuals spend 40 percent of their social time meeting at most five important people they know in their lives each week. This number of people only account for only 3 percent of peoples’ social word, which is an extremely small proportion of the total number of people in the world today. Time spent in relationship will tend to define the quality of such relationship, and according to Dunbar (2010), having more than five best friends is impossible when we interact face to face, one person at a time.” the irony with Facebook instant messaging is that people can share their interaction with as many people as they like at an instant. Dunbar (2010) compares such a communication approach to the proverbial lighthouse, which blinks, on the horizon to spread light on any passing ship. Although users of social networking sites can "broadcast" their feeling to multiple people across the network, the ...