Impact of the Internet on Relationships and Community During Adolescence :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

From birth, humans seek connectedness. Regular social interaction is most as important as eating or sleeping, and is achieved through social activities and relationships with family and friends. Creating and maintaining these relationships is a process that occurs throughout an individuals lifetime. Yet, during adolescence these interpersonal relationships start to hold up a particularly important function. Interactions with family and peers are vital to adolescent identity establishment, and the crucial role of these relationships places additional stress on the bonds during this life stage. As Steinberg mentioned in a recent paper, Adolescence has long been characterized as a time when individuals begin to explore and examine psychological characteristics of the self in order to discover who they truly are, and how they fit in the social world in which they live(Steinberg, 2001). The idea that adolescence is a time of role experimentation and a stage of identity formation (Erik son, 1956) has existed for decades, dating back to Eriksons definition of the life stage Identity vs. Role Confusion. In this stage, as the adolescent begins to be conscious of how their identity is perceived by others, a heightened level of identity awareness develops. Although Eriksons idea of a life stage with perfect delineated boundaries is now fairly obsolete, the make do to define ones identity during adolescence is still very present and relevant. With the advent of the internet, the possibilities for defining the self have expanded dramatically. The youth sector latched onto this technology, development it to help ease and facilitate connections with others. Email and Instant messenging conquered people to communicate quickly in a non-confrontational fashion, and weblog communities encouraged individuals to share their thoughts, feelings, and opinions with others online. All of these methods of communication allow the individual to assume multiple identities. According t o (Lenhart, 2001) almost one quarter of teens admit to pretending to be someone else over Instant messenger or email. Thus, it is undeniable that this online medium is forum where the construction of role confusion and diffusion can occur freely. But, what impact does this have on the formation of a whiz identity that is congruent with the ego? An important part of the adolescent identity formation process is the recognition that others notice the outward expression of the self, and that this outward expression must agree with others in order to fit into a social group.