YouthNet blog

Monday Jan 26, 2009

What, face to face??! Relationships in a digital age...

This article was originally written for our Online Peer Advisor update but Patrick suggested that I post it on the blog as well.

The above quote was the response that a young person who I was speaking to in my previous job made when I suggested that he resolve a relationship worry he had by speaking to his girlfriend. He was younger than our remit - a lot of our users don't conduct their relationships entirely online. However, it is interesting to think about how the growth of computer based communication such as instant messaging, social networking sites and text messaging has changed the way we start and conduct relationships, and how it has affected the sort of questions we get asked.

I noticed that over the  last few weeks there were a lot of questions that touched or focussed on this subject in one way or another. Concerns can include worries that, after a period of intense messaging, a potential boyfriend stops replying, ex partners using facebook status updates to provoke jealousy or trying to work out how, after a long period of getting to know a guy online, one should take a relationship to the next level.

All these issues are ones that wouldn't have come up ten years ago, when the question would tend to be 'Why hasn't he called?', rather than 'Why is she taking longer than usual to reply to my text message', or 'Why is he leaving messages on his ex girlfriend's facebook wall?'.

It is a particularly interesting issue for us to think about as Online Peer Advisors. We ourselves are using similar technologies to enable us to advise, and getting to grips with the different issues that that causes. Our users are more likely to approach us because they can ask anonymous questions that they may be too embarrassed to speak about face to face, but this very anonymity that the internet provides means it can be harder for advisors to know enough about the user to get the emotional tone and content of the support we give quite right.

In many ways, the kind of issues we meet when advising online, reflect the issues that users may face in conducting relationships online. The users can preserve a sense of anonymity on a social networking site or messaging service and can carefully manage the impression of themselves that they give to others. This can enable people to be more forward, flirty, or open than they find themselves able to be in a face to face situation. This has been called the Online Disinhibition Effect and you can read about it in this interesting psychological analysis.

The same goes for text messages. They feel less 'committed' and more lighthearted than a phone call, but any change in 'texting behaviour' – he's texting less, she's taking longer to reply, should I text him again or wait for his reply? – can lead to all manner of analysis, doubt and distress, which just didn't happen when you didn't ever expect to be in contact with someone every hour of every day.

Now someone has their mobile on them all the time, a lack of immediate response can easily be interpreted as a conscious decision on someone else's part not to reply. On top of this, different people have different attitudes to technology; meeting someone who is rarely online, or who doesn't leap to reply to every text message can cause users to decide that someone isn't interested when in fact they may be very interested but just don't show their interest through digital communication in the same way.

Digital messaging is another phenomenon that has changed the way relationships work. The ability to copy and paste from message box to message box means that what someone is saying in what they thought was a private space, could actually be shared with other users, sometimes while the initial conversation is still continuing. And once you've typed it, your words are out there to be passed around, analysed by future partners and future partners' friends and often taken completely out of context.

It's no wonder we get a lot of questions surrounding these issues. There is an interesting study on 'Digital Relationships in the MySpace Generation' on this link below if you would like to read more.

You can also download a study on 'Young People, Wellbeing and Communication Technologies' on this link.

The writer of this article has a lot of time for online relationships, while some users don't like social networking sites at all.

Sometimes, just helping a user to recognise that communicating digitally is quite different from communicating face to face, and the problems it can cause, is enough to help them look at their issues from a fresh perspective. In other cases, encouraging them to talk to a partner face to face and giving them information about the best way to do this – we have all seen TheSite.org article on Communicating as a Couple. There's also a good section in BBC Relationships.

For some questions, the fact that they can communicate online will help the user to solve their worry. Sometimes the issues are complicated or difficult for the user to speak about face to face. In these cases, suggesting they write things down in an email for their partner, friend or family can sometimes help them to put across what they want to say clearly, ready for a follow up discussion later on.

An interesting looking book I found on Amazon called Cyberspace Romance: The Psychology of Online Relationships.. wonder if the YouthNet budget would stretch to it....