Is The World Wide Web Damaging Our Relationships?

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Ever since the internet became normal, there has been a dispute about its significance on social wellbeing.

On one hand are those who maintain that , with social media sites like Facebook, the internet has enabled the public to improve their social lives more than ever before. The second group are those who maintain that , with all the time spent bouncing around onthe internet, the public have become ever more cut off from others, and are missing out on genuine human connections.

Science is now getting its say.

Research done at the Stockholm School of Economics looked into the association between peoples internet use and their results on various measures of social wellbeing, such as emotional health and work life balance.

The lead investigator of the study, Dr. Elizabeth Engleberg discovered that individuals with who used the internet the most often were notably lonelier and had a poorer balance between work and play than those with less internet use.

This outcome strongly confirms the idea that the internet cant stand in for genuine face to face interaction. It seems that no matter how much people communicate online, they dont find the genuine human connections that they need.

Moreover, it looks that too much internet use also keeps people from developing the skills required to connect with others. Dr. Engelberg discovered that individuals who spent a lot of time online did worse on scales of emotional intelligence and social skills.

It is misfortunate that the people who most need to learn how to communicate with others are the ones using the internet the most.

Intuitively, however, it makes sense: if people have troubles communicating with others, they are less likely to participate in social interaction. Instead, they spend time in solitary activities, like surfing the web.

But in doing so, these individuals have no possiblity to improve their social skills. They enter a downhill slide, where they spend increasing time online and become more and more lonesome, but never feel comfortable communicating with others.

To get out of this downward slide, people need to turn their computers off, interact, and develop genuine human relationships with others.

As Dr. Englebergs study exhibited, this is critical. Evermore so, in a world where people are spending more and more time online.

About the Author:
Discover How To Improve Communication Skills check out Social Fluencys seven essential skills at http://www.socialfluency.com/play/skills.



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