Dating, or otherwise, the way we interact is changing.  Per last week’s post about relationships and social media, with the rise of new technologies, our interactions are changing.  Dating used to consist of a courtship period with actual dates.  That is not quite the same anymore (at least not at my college).  First, there is the requisite text-ship.  This involves lots of texts filled with ‘witty’ banter.  When a phone call would be a bit too forward, we text.

This requires very little interaction.  And any, are scrutinized under new terms.

In my sorority, we find ourselves saying, “just send it out over email.”  Our meetings have gotten shorter and less frequent, because email and the internet has eliminated the need for them.   At first, we found it hard to adapt technology into the sorority.  There were too many emails being sent around, cluttering our inbox; and there are new liabilities with Facebook etc. for the sorority nationally.  However, we instituted an email of the day and the sorority has forced us to post a caveat on our sites.

Now we are finding that the problem is actually how to keep meetings relevant.  I suppose that as we are reworking what can be considered normal human interaction with technology, the new normality has bled into daily life.   It makes me sad to hear people use instant message lingo in normal conversation (almost as sad as it makes me to hear it in instant messaging): lol, g2g, ily — ew.  See the movie, Bring It On 2, and you will understand.

Since it is so easy to communicate without interacting, it makes face-to-face relationships all the more meaningful.