Impact of social media and instant messaging apps on interpersonal relationships
My Perspective
Instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram Messenger, Signal Messenger etc. (primarily WhatsApp in India) do boost one to one connectivity among friends, acquaintances and family members. It also helps improve communication related to mostly once in a while transactional and sometimes friendly topics like family matters, medical, school and college education, fun side of personal life through photos and videos. Jokes and memes, through forwards, add spices to one to one communication. Group chats and social media like Facebook and Twitter strongly influences one to one communication through instant messengers.
There is another side of instant messaging i.e. the not so nice aspects. Dopamine is a brain chemical that plays a vital role in mood regulation of human beings. It seems that entire society is driven by the feel good factor due to constant availability of cheap dopamine through group chats and social media. Unless it is transactional or related to business, most one to one chats survive as long as the recipients gets positive social stimulus and dopamine influx. It doesn’t matter if something is good or healthy for us, as long as we get that quick dopamine fix.
From my experience of chatting since the days of Yahoo! Chat, I see that loss of reward stimuli and dopamine activity lead to one or both the recipients disengage at the slightest pretext. Read receipts, online status, last seen status etc. further add to anxiety and feeling unimportant or betrayed. There is lack of patience and empathy. Sharing contrarian or critical views, on matters connected to society and politics, often cause functional impairment and getting ignored or blocked.