Social interaction online refers to the way individuals relate with one another virtually. Before the invention of the internet, people used face to face interactions to convey, and receive messages. They would post letters for long distance correspondences, call on landlines, travel for miles to deliver information but the internet seemed to bridge this distance, time and information gap. The online social interactions are facilitated by mobile the internet through channels like social media sites, blogs, dating sites; discussion boards, live video calling applications and instant messaging channels. They have both negative and positive effects. Social online interactions have facilitated long distance communication, making new connections, promote the development of critical thinking and argumentation skills and also act as learning opportunities. However, social interactions online expose people to cyber bullying, affects cognitive development, alienates them from reality, facilitate cyber crimes like identity theft and deny people the benefits of one on one interactions. The effects of online social interactions are therefore not all negative as some researchers purport, but people can also gain a lot from them.
Excessive online social interactions have been linked with negative effects on people’s cognitive development (Graham, Dutton & Castells 2014) . Social engagement, higher social connectedness, and physically engaging leisure activities sharpen people’s cognition in late adulthood and delay or prevent the onset of dementia. Physically friendly people have been said to live longer, are healthier, and less susceptible to depression (Zweig, 2016) . Online social interactions, therefore, deny people the cognitive stimulation of one on one interaction and due to the seclusion, they could lead to depression. Online social interactions among children pose a danger to their intellectual development (Sundar, 2015) . They result in a bad language and literacy skills, concentration problems, and attention deficits encourage laziness to learn, impair c reativity and lead to stunted imaginations. Facebook depression is a new phrase that has been coined to refer to the effect that Facebook is having on people's emotional health (Turkle, 2011). The online interactions on Facebook could make a person feel like a failure when their peers post photos of their accomplishments which are sometimes even faked.
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The unfair comparisons make people go into depression at the thought of being less advanced as compared to their peers (Sundar, 2015). Online social interactions have therefore been associated with adverse intellectual and cognitive outcomes among across all ages. However, other studies have shown that online social interactions have a positive effect on people’s cognition and intellect (Turkle, 2011). Education based social online interactions help in the development of learning skills, improved operational knowledge, learning of new vocabularies and helps in developing positive attitudes towards learning (Graham et.al., 2014). On online social interactions leading to depression and cognitive related diseases, research shows that physical, social interactions could have the same effect. Social engagements and social ties with toxic people could lead to more harm than those online interactions (Sundar, 2015). There are also various support groups online which connect victims and survivors of similar circumstances which help avert the depression. Social interactions online are therefore a two sided blade depending on how people engage.
Online social interactions lead to poor socialization skills (Sundar, 2015). During one on one interactions, vocal and visual cues play a crucial role in conveying the intended meaning of a message and decoding it (Turkle, 2011). The cues include someone’s facial expressions, eye contact, the tone of their voice and their posture. A large part people’s lives today is being spent on their devices compared to a small portion dedicated to personal interactions (Graham et.al., 2014). The little time apportioned to physical interactions has led to the deterioration of people’s emotional intelligence when it comes to reading people's verbal cues which are an important aspect of effective socialization (Sundar, 2015). The virtual interactions deny the parties involved the chance to assess the trueness or authenticity of the information conveyed. Since they rarely put their conversational skills to the test, people are missing out on lucrative opportunities due to their poor communication skills fostered by their online interaction tendencies (Turkle, 2011). They fail job interviews, pitch their ideas effectively at work, and their poor skills deny them the opportunity to make new connections and friendships at personal levels.
The virtual environment also makes people careless with words since there are no means of accountability especially when pseudo accounts are the basis of the interactions (Turkle, 2011). The anonymity has made insensitivity and the lack of empathy the culture among some internet users' traits that they import to their daily physical interactions. These characteristics have in turn led to the development of conflicted physical socializations (Graham et.al., 2014). Despite the negative connotations, social interactions online have resulted in creation of relevant social networks. Employers are increasingly using professional social interaction sites like Linked-in to connect with employees. Through social interactions on social media, people get to be friends and share ideas with more people than they would on average everyday interactions (Sundar, 2015). Through social interactions, people get to learn new trends and stay up to date with current events. The information sharpens people’s socialization skills since they learn what to talk about when socializing with other people (Zweig, 2016). People from internet platforms also organize for physical meet ups which act as avenues of meeting more people one on one and give members a chance to sharpen their socialization skills (Zweig, 2016). Therefore, if the quality and meaningfulness of interactions are not considered, virtual interactions yield more socialization than physical interactions (Zweig, 2016). Therefore, as much as online social interactions contribute to poor socialization tendencies, they also help in sharpening and creating socialization avenues at the same time.
Social online interactions facilitate cyberbullying (Turkle, 2011). Cyberbullying is characterized by a systematic misuse of power over the victim using the internet. Cyber bullying has adverse effects if not stopped which include suicide, depression, social isolation, violent reactions and even murder. Online disinhibition is the leading cause of cyber bullying (Sundar, 2015). The notion that the internet streets are un-policed and anyone can say anything, however, harmful without consequences encourages the bullies. Unlike the physical bullying, the perpetrator fails to see the pain they cause to their victims which makes them unremorseful (Zweig, 2016). A study was undertaken with 2186 respondents, and it deduced that cyber bullying gives bullies a sense of power, amusement and social acceptance (Turkle, 2011). Another study found that bullies’ excuse for their behavior is their dislike for the victim which had been fueled by negative virtual or physical interactions before the act (Turkle, 2011). Another study that sought to investigate the nature of bullying reported that cyber bullying is correlated with poor social skills. The bullies were aggressive, socially anxious and had low self-esteem (Sundar, 2015). These findings show that the online social interactions expose people to harmful situations since cyber bullying could escalate from online to offline and lead to even death.
In sum, social interactions online have both negative and positive consequences. They result in cognitive impairment on some occasions and cognitively stimulate it in others. They result in poor socialization skills but all act as facilitators of social interactions. These interactions are therefore two-fold and should be encouraged but done with moderation and caution.
References
Graham, M., Dutton, W. H., & Castells, M. (2014). Society and the Internet: how networks of information and communication are changing our lives . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sundar, S. S. (2015). The handbook of the psychology of communication technology . Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together why we expect more from technology and less from each other . New York: Basic Books
Zweig, K. (2016). Socioinformatics - the social impact of interactions between humans and it . S.l.: Springer International Pu.
