Blog Awards Challenge

Blog Awards Challenge 6 - 1st runner-up (Distinction): A Determined Frame of Mind

Winning Entry Title: Did Cyberlife Kill Real Life Intimacy [original link]

Winning entry is reprinted below.
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You only have 24 hours in one day.

You wake up, fix your bed, take a shower, eat some breakfast, and then prepare to get out of the house, an activity that takes about two hours. Then you spend another hour or two to get to your place of work or school. You spend another eight hours in that place. The clock chimes 5 pm, hurrah since its dismissal time. You rush to the nearest fx or bus station, wait for your ride to come for around 30 minutes, and then spend another hour or two traveling in the traffic laden roads during the rush hour. Twelve hours already has already gone by. When you get home you try to freshen up a bit, open the TV to the evening news, cook dinner, eat dinner and take care of the dishes after, pack the stuff you need for the next day and try to prepare for bed. Roughly 3 hours. The entire day you interact with the people around you. Before you go to bed and get a full eight hour sleep you realize you have still have one hour to spare.

You sit there pondering what to do with your spare hour and remember that you still have to check your email when you get home because your friend from Australia may have replied to your message. Or to look up what your real life friend was talking about on Google.

If you’re using dial-up connecting can be quite a pain. Sometimes it takes half an hour or so just to get connected. Then of course, when you go online, you just don’t spend that online time to reply to your friend’s email. You also look that “thing” up on Google, then you find something related that also piques your interest, or a forum about it which has a very lively conversation going on and the next thing you know you already have an account because you can’t wait to have the access to reply .

The activity didn’t go past two hours. It still left you with seven hours to sleep fitfully.

Another day passed by and you open the pc again to check the updates and see others who have joined in the conversation. You see replies that actually show their support to your views and start responding to them. Over the course of the week the cycle continued and you found yourself talking more to these online companions over a wide array of topics, get introduced to other community forms over the internet like role playing game servers, or special interest sites. By and by, you spend longer hours over the internet. At first this only ate up your time for sleep but this also affected how you rushed off to work, your temperament by the time you got to work, and how much patience you dished out to the rest of your family members by the time you got home.

Conflicts arose and you find yourself telling your online friends about your thoughts instead of sharing them with people in the vicinity. It is more convenient and they understand your situation. If they didn’t, you can always shut them off. The activity consumes more of your time as the cycle continues to a downward spiral. You now end up spending more hours online than chilling with your family or your peers. No wonder some people think that those who are good with computers have no lives.

Ask me now the question- did cyber life kill real life intimacy? Real life intimacy defined as our interpersonal relationships in real life, I say no.

Internet is just like any other media form. Like the radio or the TV, it can be distracting, informative, entertaining and time consuming. The thing is, no matter how much it occupies our senses, at the end of the day it is still the user who dictates and mandates how he should spend his time. Yes, one’s cyber life can directly infringe on one’s real life responsibilities and cause friction with the user’s real life relationships indirectly, but that is not always the case. It is how this internet media is used that defines whether or not it would pose a bad impact on one’s life. For example, cyber communities can also be used as a means of support on how to enrich your real life relationships. By using time minders to limit the user’s time on the internet, joining cyber communities may not infringe on one’s real life. Moreover, it could be a source of advice on how to deal with your moody partner, overbearing boss or irritating sibling. It can keep you informed of the latest happenings, help you bring good conversation topics in your career seminar program or after work parties.

Totally ridding yourself of a cyber life is not the answer as the reaches of the Internet is expanding. It is up to us to deal and adapt with the changes in the environment we are living in. We have twenty four hours and it is up to us on how to fully maximize it without compromising other things. At the end of the day it is still the user who is in control and has the final say. So, if someone’s real life intimacy ends up dead do not blame “cyber life”.
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