OPINION: The Illusion of Sociability in Dating Apps

Social networks are undoubtedly one of the biggest means of seeking relationships today. Not only professional relations, but also friendship, romantic or even just new sexual partners.
But, going to the definition of the name social network, what is “social” is about them ?
We use social media alone and are not in relationshipith people. Everyday we post everything, stuck on screens. Reproducing an eternal happiness (have you noticed that everybody is happy online). More and more connected and I would say bringing virtual behavior into our daily real life.
According to Habermas, social media have the potential to become a public sphere.
“The public sphere would therefore require media for information and communication and access by all citizens. The logic of the public sphere is independent of economic and political power” (Habermas 1991, 36)

The ease and access to communication around the world that the Internet produces. But it needs money and today it is limited, because it is regulated and dominated by the large corporations that own the capital. Christian Fuchs (2014) “argues that the emergence of “social media” is embedded in the trend that boundaries between the dualities of modernity have become somewhat liquid and blurred: we find situations where the distinctions between play and labour, leisure time and work time, consumption and production, private and public life, the home, and the office have become more porous.”
Understanding this social process of social media, we come to the construction of relationships through these media. As Fuchs talks about in “liquid and blurred”, I immediately think of Bauman.

“Unlike ‘real relationships’, ‘virtual relationships’ are easy to enter and to exit. They look smart and clean, feel easy to use, when compared with the heavy, slow-moving, messy real stuff.” Zygmunt Bauman