Digital dating woes
By Claire Cudahy
Sometimes I like to think back to ten years ago, when chatting on AIM was a novelty and text messaging was unheard of. You remember the days of dial-up, when the Internet tied up the phone line and an awkward exchange with a parent stood between you and a phone conversation with your crush? Simpler times.Although our generation knows of floppy discs and snail's pace Internet speeds, the rapid development of technology has accustomed us to efficiency and instantaneous results. The twenty-first century has brought with it a plethora of devices, web sites and electronic modes of communication that have altered our interactions with the opposite sex. We are, undoubtedly, a generation of technology-fiends. Technology has transformed our culture, and consequently, our love lives. How exactly has it done this? I can only speculate.
So you meet a girl at a party. After shouting at each other over the keg for ten minutes, you finally ask for her number. Then what? Do you text her? Facebook her? Call her? Tweet about her (weird)? Read her blog? More often than not, it goes a little something like this: Step 1. You text her a few days after you meet. You both play coy (as coy as you can be in a text message), and spend the following days texting on and off. Friday rolls around and you see her out again. Step 2. You hook up. Maybe it happens a few more times, maybe it doesn't. Then it all stops. No texts, tweets or wall posts, only a moderately awkward hello at the next party. She doesn't seem to mind, you don't either. Then you both move on to the next person to repeat the steps.
I will acknowledge the blatant simplification of this scenario, but it is hard to deny that this is our generation's form of "dating." Dinner and a movie with a date seem like an ancient ritual. Technology has created barriers in the form of electronic communication that allow for impersonal relationships. Although these digital buffers allow for faster and more constant communication, there is a loss of intimacy and other sneaky complications that come with it. Some people expect constant contact because of our ability to communicate 24/7 in about 247 ways, and subsequently put more weight on this than the times they are physically together. When it comes to actual face-to-face talking with a texting buddy, we miss our digital poker face. A get-to-know-you conversation takes skills we seem to have neglected. The relationships-if you can call them that-formed from impersonal communication are usually superficial and short-lived.
Just as we await with breathless anticipation for the newest iPhone, so do we ancicipate an update from Boy 1.0 to Boy 2.0. We want things and we want things now. Web pages taking more than a few seconds to load? Unacceptable. Going on two or three dates to get to know someone? Time-consuming. Our society is hooked on speed and success, and this is reflected in our lack of patience in social interactions.
Why spend time on one person when we can socialize with a dozen and get the instant, albeit shallow, gratification we so desire.Call me a traditionalist, but the idea of skipping the complications of texting, Facebooking and e-mailing when dealing with a romantic interest seems refreshing. Technology was created to make things easier on us- to de-clutter our lives, speed things up, give us answers.
Yet ironically enough, as college students, most of our romantic interactions dwell in a "gray area" of uncertainty and no-expectations. We expect things from technology, but when it comes to having a significant other, we tend to pop in our earbuds, glance down at our phones, and speed our way through digital romance.
Claire Cudahy is a junior English major.