Computer-Mediated Communication:
New and Improved Human Relations
or the End of Real Interaction?
Alyssa Mellott
From the home, to the workplace, to the classroom, the Internet has clicked its way into our everyday lives. Today’s students can e-mail as file attachments their end-of-term papers to their professors and can then turn around and use e-mail to gather a group of friends for a party or to celebrate the term’s completion. These online exchanges, called CMC (or computer-mediated communication), sound fairly commonplace at the turn of the millennium. But what we have yet to discover is how CMC might change both the ways we communicate and the quality of our relationships. While many praise CMC’s potential to bridge barriers and promote meaningful dialogue, others caution that CMC is fraught with dangers.
Very soon, half of America will communicate via e-mail, according to analysts (Singh 97). We can only assume that figure will grow—rapidly—as children who have matured in the Internet era move on to college and into careers. With e-mail becoming an increasingly common form of communication, people are discovering and conversing with one another in a variety of ways that bring a new twist to old, familiar patterns. Using e-mail, people meet “to exchange pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, [and] fall in love” (Chenault 104). That is, through e-mail people do what they have always done: communicate. But the medium of that communication has changed, which excites some people and concerns others.
Advocates argue that the Internet has not only made existing types of communication faster, more convenient, more efficient, and less expensive; it has also made possible “new forms of community life,” such as chat rooms and discussion lists, in which people from all over the country and the world gather to share information and exchange points of view (Kling 98). CMC is potentially so powerful a medium of exchange that some believe it can promote dialogue within communities that are declining. A community, after all, is built on people acting in the interests of their neighbors for the common good. Via e-mail, online newsgroups, and e-forums, neighbors will have new ways of looking out for one another (Kling 98).
Still, skeptics aren’t convinced that electronic communication can provide the basis of lasting personal relationships, primarily because relationships initiated on a computer display lack immediacy and physical presence. What may be missing in the electronic village, say the critics, is “an essential core of humanity” (Maasik and Solomon 98):
The unreal world of virtual culture...is being substituted for a social reality made up of real human beings. And such a world, based entirely on the transmission of electronic signals, is potentially a world in which human beings will be unable to conceive of others as human beings. When all interaction is electronic, [the critics] ask, where is the ground for true human empathy and relatedness? (Maasik and Solomon 98–99)
The fact that people communicate—via e-mail, snail (written) mail, or in person—does not guarantee that their exchanges lead to community. Members of a community trust and care for one another; they extend themselves and offer help (Kling 98). Critics of CMC argue that the supporters gloss over this important distinction when they assume that electronic forums are “building new forms of community life” (Kling 98). Talking, electronically or otherwise, marks only the beginning of a process. Community building is hard work and takes time.
One of the fastest-growing forms of CMC is the instant message, or IM, which is a kind of cross between a telephone and an e-mail conversation. Using IM, people carry on real time conversations in writing. Increasingly, teenagers IM rather than phone or even e-mail one another (Edwards 99). America Online estimates that “by 2005 IMs will surpass e-mail as the primary way of communicating online” (Edwards 100). According to a recent study, “37% of teenagers said they have used instant messaging to write some-thing they wouldn’t have said in person” (Miller 101). But while instant messaging is appealing and convenient, some users view it as potentially rude and intrusive. According to reporter Michelle Slatalla, “Instant messages can be more annoying than other forms of electronic communication because they appear on the screen as soon as they are sent. Recipients of voice mail, E-mail, or faxes can acknowledge a message whenever it is convenient” (103). As Jeanne Hinds, publisher of a Web site on “netiquette,” notes, “It’s the cyber-equivalent of someone walking into your office and starting up a conversation as if you had nothing better to do” (qtd. in Slalatta 103).
Notwithstanding such concerns, proponents of CMC confidently point to examples in which the new technologies of communication bring people together in meaningful, healthy ways. In a study of first-year college students, researcher Richard Holeton of Stanford University found that students who were ordinarily reserved were often the most active participants in Internet discussions (Branscum 99). Similarly, the Internet can serve as a way for people who are having trouble dating to find partners. For instance, Tom Buckley of Portland, Oregon, met his wife after signing up with Match.com. Buckley noted that the Internet helped him to meet his wife because “neither one of us was the type to walk up to someone in the gym or a bar and say, ‘You’re the fuel to my fire’” (qtd. in Morris 106). Holeton’s research and Buckley’s experience suggest that the Internet may provide a way for otherwise quiet or timid individuals to express themselves.
Beyond simply providing a safe and lower-stress place to meet, the Internet may actually promote honest communication. An Ohio University sociologist, Andrea Baker, concluded from her research that individuals who begin their romance online can be at an advantage: Writing via e-mail can promote a “better and deeper” relationship than one begun in person because writing itself promotes a frank, honest exchange (qtd. in Wolcott 105). Certainly this was the experience of John Dwyer, a Californian who tired of meeting women in bars and decided instead to post an advertisement online. He eventually met the woman who would become his wife—Debbie— who said: “‘If you are honest when talking online, you can strip away all the superficial stuff and really get to know someone’” (Wolcott 105). When it works, CMC can promote a sincere exchange among those looking for lasting relationships.
Increasingly, Internet dating services are becoming an accepted way of meeting prospective romantic partners. As New York Times reporter Amy Harmon notes, “Online dating, once viewed as a refuge for the socially inept and as a faintly disrespectable way to meet other people, is rapidly becoming a fixture of single life for adults of all ages, backgrounds and interests” (107).
Skeptics are not so easily convinced, however. Show them an example of a relationship that blossomed online and they will point to another in which one party was betrayed emotionally or financially. Take, for instance, the experience of Robert Spradling. He met and formed a romantic attachment to a Ukrainian woman online. She encouraged the romance via e-mail and eventually asked for money to set up a business. He sent $8,000 and later, again online, asked her to marry him. She agreed, they met in Kiev, and after Spradling returned home, she disappeared–his money gone and his heart broken (Morris 106–07). Perhaps Spradling was one of the Internet romantics for whom it is wiser to avoid face-to-face meetings. That way, he could have enjoyed the inter-active fantasy of a “cyber-lover” without ever having to ruin the fun with the uncomfortable truths of real life (Suler 104–05).
It is far from certain, then, that all or even most relationships begun online develop positively. Closer to the truth is that both online and offline, some relationships begin—and end—in deceit while others blossom. Experts do not yet know whether computer-mediated communication, because of its electronic format, alters relationships as they are forming or, rather, simply offers a new territory in which to find others. Time will tell. In the mean-time, the advice that loved ones give us when we set off to find new friends—Be careful!—makes sense whether we are looking in the virtual world or down the street.
Works Cited
Branscum, Deborah. “Life at High-Tech U.” Newsweek 27 Oct. 1997: 78–80.
Chenault, Brittney G. “Developing Personal and Emotional Relationships Via Computer-Mediated Communication.” CMC Magazine May 1998. 20 Mar. 2000 < may/chenault.html>.
Edwards, Ellen. “IM Generation: Instant Messaging Is In, Phones Out.” Seattle Times 16 June 2003: E4.
Harmon, Amy. “Online Dating Sheds Its Stigma as Losers.com.” New York Times 29 June 2003: A1+.
Kling, Rob. “Social Relationships in Electronic Forums: Hangouts, Salons, Workplaces and Communities.” CMC Magazine 22 July 1996. 4 Feb. 2000 < kling.html>.
Maasik, Sonia, and Jack Solomon, eds. Signs of Life in the USA. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997.
Miller, Stanley A. “Passing Notes: Teens Bare Their Hearts with Instant Messages.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 26 June 2001: 1M+.
Morris, Bonnie R. “You’ve Got Romance! Seeking Love Online: Net-Based Services Change the Landscape, If Not the Odds, of Finding the Perfect Mate.” New York Times on the Web 26 Aug. 1999. 23 Feb. 2000 < index.html>.
Singh, Sanjiv N. “Cyberspace: A New Frontier for Fighting Words.” Rutgers Computer and Technology Law Journal 25.2 (1999): 283.
Slatalla, Michelle. “Minding Your E-Manners: Over-use of Instant Messaging Can Be a Major Breach of Netiquette.” Gazette (Montreal) 25 Sep. 1999: K2.
Suler, John. “Cyberspace Romances: Interview with Jean-François Perreault of Branchez-vous.” The Psychology of Cyberspace 11 Dec. 1996. 7 Apr. 2000 < psycyber/psycyber.html>.
Wolcott, Jennifer. “Click Here for Romance.” The Christian Science Monitor 13 Jan. 1999. 23 Feb. 2000 < durable/1991/01/13/fp11s1-csm.shtml>.