Moving away from home to Cornell was a rough transition for me. I missed my friends and family from home, and found it more difficult than expected to keep in contact with them. It was hard to set time aside to call my friends and family everyday especially because of my work load and the time I was spending with my new Cornell friends. So, in order to keep in touch with my friends from home I used computer mediated communication such as AIM, email, and Facebook. The online relationship actually helped me become closer to one of my friends from home, Jessica. We started out first sending messages back and forth on Facebook and talking on AIM (when we had the time to sign on). Then we started emailing each other daily. This really helped to strengthen our relationship, because if we didn’t talk online daily, then we probably would have only spoken a couple of times a month on the telephone. The computer mediated communication allowed us to talk to each other when it was convenient for us, and ultimately it helped us to become better friends.
When analyzing this relationship the theory that really comes to mind is McKenna’s relationship facilitation factors. These factors are identifiability, removal of gating features, interactional control, connecting to similar others, and getting the goods. The two factors that best describe my experience with Jessica are gating features and interactional control. Even though Jessica and I were good friends when we were at home, there were some issues, like family problems for example, that I did not feel comfortable telling her. However, the social anxiety I had about those issues were no longer present when I was online, and I was able to share these problems with her and ask for her advice. We disclosed more personal information than we would normally face-to-face, because of the removal of a gating feature (social anxiety). Another factor that explains my online relationship with Jessica is interactional control. It was easy talking to Jessica online, because I could respond to her messages and emails on my own time. We did not have to set a certain time aside to spend together; we would be forced to do this if we were having a face-to-face relationship. We both had control over when to talk or respond. We had the freedom of replying to an email at 4am, in our pajamas, in between studying for two prelims. This control over when we interacted gave us both more of an opportunity to get more personal and in-depth with the information we were sharing in the emails.
Overall the computer mediated system really brought me and Jessica together. It removed the gates that perhaps were keeping us from sharing our complete selves in person, and it also gave us control over when we interacted so we had more freedom and time to construct personal and meaningful emails.
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2 comments:
High School all they said was college is about time management. I am still trying to figure out when I even have time to manage the time that I have. Playing sports out here and having classes everyday is rough and as you have seen its not easy to have time to talk to everyone that you want to. Almost every minute of my day is taken up between class, practice, homework, and eating its like trying to even talk to my parents is a difficult task. My friend’s family and I have established a similar system that you and your friend have established in the sense of sending e-mails. I always have time for e-mails but never have enough time to have a conversation on the phone though.
Its interesting though how your relationship got closer through e-mail. Your ability to open up and tell her more is possibly the next step in your relationship that when you see her in person now maybe it will be easier to talk about things. I know with me that I can tell my best friend any thing but it took us a while to get like that.
I would like to say that I feel like I can totally relate to your blog post! I too, found the transition to living at Cornell, hard in terms of staying in touch with friends from back home. As much as I try to keep in touch, it ends up being too difficult to devote extended periods of time, talking on the phone. There is always enough going on in my immediate environment that it seems impossible to focus my attention elsewhere. As a result, I usually end up speaking to my home friends once every two weeks. Although we reunite over summers and winter breaks, I usually feel very disconnected from their lives and vice versa. The idea of using email and other forms of mediated communication would probably help save my relationships too, because it would be less time consuming and would allow me to communicate when it is convenient for me which goes along with McKenna’s description of interactional control (which you also mentioned as beneficial) to facilitate relationships.
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