Advantages
For more intimate relationships, research has shown that personal disclosures create a greater sense of intimacy. This gives a sense of trust and equality, which people search for in a relationship, and this is often easier to achieve online than face to face, although not all disclosures are responded to positively. Individuals are able to engage in more self disclosure than an average interaction, because a person can share their inner thoughts, feelings and beliefs and be met with less disapproval and fewer sanctions online than is the case in face-to-face encounters. Researcher Cooper, termed this type of relationship as a "Triple A Engine" implying that internet relationships are accessible, affordable, and anonymous.
Online, barriers that might stand in the way of relationship such as physical attractiveness, social anxiety and stuttering do not exist. Whereas those could hinder an individual in face-to-face encounters, an Internet interaction negates this and allows the individual freedom. Research has shown that stigmas such as these can make a large impact on first impressions in face-to-face meeting, and this does not apply with an online relationship. The Internet "enhances face-to-face and telephone communication as network members become more aware of each others' needs and stimulate their relationships through more frequent contact".
Read more about this topic: Internet Relationship
Famous quotes containing the word advantages:
“The respect for human rights is one of the most significant advantages of a free and democratic nation in the peaceful struggle for influence, and we should use this good weapon as effectively as possible.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Can you conceive what it is to native-born American women citizens, accustomed to the advantages of our schools, our churches and the mingling of our social life, to ask over and over again for so simple a thing as that “we, the people,” should mean women as well as men; that our Constitution should mean exactly what it says?”
—Mary F. Eastman, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4 ch. 5, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)