Technology and Social interaction

I think that technology makes social interactions more convenient in a way but may take away some part of the everyday face to face interaction. I think it has both positive and negative impacts. It makes it a lot easier for people to communicate with one another, organize group parties, and keep in touch. It could be negative in the sense that people may be too lazy and only rely on technology to communicate with other people or be too wrapped up in it to understand the importance of face to face interaction. I have used the internet to meet friends that I have and I do not think it is neglecting our everyday relationships if it is managed. I used to spend way too much on the computer playing games and interacting with people on the internet but now I have controlled it more. Whenever I got back from school, I would just go online and start talking to them and I would also not hangout with my "real" life friends in favor of playing games. If it is managed correctly then it should be fine but back then I chose one over the other instead of maintaining both. At the same time though, it didn't really affect my personal relationships in "real" life that much because I saw them during school all the time. I keep typing real as "real" because of a saying that my friend said . I met this friend through the internet and we are still friends and what happened was that one time my other friend was saying how he has been busy with real life and then my friend goes, "Real life? What are we fake life?". I feel that that specific line rings true. I think relationships that are established via face to face or through internet can remain real and personal. I don't think our society needs to focus on creating more "real" spaces/public spheres because I think that we have enough already. We have so many malls and shopping centers along with stores and parks that people go to. In my personal opinion, I think that it really depends on the person to either communicate through technology or through face to face interaction. There are some Internet sources that makes me wary though such as online dating sites and Craigslist. There was this huge news fest on Craigslist because a murderer was hunting victims using that. Online dating sites make me wary because of how they are matched up. They are matched up through their interests but I think that they need to talk first before setting up this meeting. I am not against online dating because I have dated guys that i have met online before and the more recent and serious one I had was last year where he flew from New York to see me. It didn't last though because I just didn't like the way he acted during that time. So even though you may think you know someone, some people may still act differently in face to face contact than internet contact for various reasons.