EFFECT OF MODERN NETWORKING ON MALE FEMALE INTERACTION AND RELATIONSHIPS IN PAKISTAN

EFFECT OF MODERN NETWORKING ON MALE FEMALE INTERACTION AND RELATIONSHIPS

INTRODUCTION

Male and Female Relationship

Relationship is a connection between two people.

An example of relationship is a husband and his wife. Relationship of a brother and sister or two business partners working together.

IMPORTANCE

It is very important to be in a relationship as females are always fragile and dependent on males physically, emotionally and economically as in the Holy Quran it is also mention that

“Males are made caretaker of the families”.

Males are also dependent on female for their families and daily routine work because it is the women who make it possible for her man

Women are taught to be more intimate while men are taught that intimacy is somewhat seen as a weakness. Emotionally women differ from men because they are more open with their feelings.   Women can cry and express their feelings with no inhibitions, while once again crying for a man would be seen as a sign of weakness. Female friendships can somewhat be seen as a stronger relationship for the simple fact that they are more intimate in the emotional and physical level.

GENDER ROLE IN RELATIONSHIPS

Some of the most basic gender specific roles have been around since the beginning of time including the most common gender role that the man is the sole provider for his household and the woman is the “stay-at-home mom.” Some other simple gender roles include: the man paying for dates or the man should be the one to ask the woman out on a date or propose.

Things in today’s society are not much different from when our grandparents were teenagers in the sense that if someone breaks away from the norm, society will generally look down upon them with a disapproving look and eyes full of judgment. Gender roles are important and play a big part in relationships today, each couple has found something that works for them and what works for one couple doesn’t always work for another.

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE ASPECTS OF RELATIONSHIPS

It is positive to be in a relationship as it helps u to find your compatibility with the other person.

It will help to find your spouse.

Girls are dependent on males so being in a relationship helps them to share their feelings.

 LITERATURE REVIEW

The main component that allows for mate selection seems to lie in the evolutionary need for the species to continue. Primarily, males and females that battled and proved themselves strongest, attracted mates more often. Then, they would choose from the strongest from those.

Until recently, it was thought the human race had lost the ability to attract a mate but researches have shown that it is not so.

Daily experience suggests that non-romantic friendships between males and females are not only possible, but common—men and women live, work, and play side-by-side, and generally seem to be able to avoid spontaneously relationships together.

New research suggests that there may be some truth to this possibility—that people may think they are capable of being “just friends” with members of the opposite sex, but the opportunity for “romance” is often lurking just around the corner, waiting to pounce at the most inopportune moment. 

RESEARCH CONDUCTED ON UNDERGRADUATE OPPOSITE SEX FRIENDS

Researchers brought 88 pairs of undergraduate opposite-sex friends into…a science lab for investigation. In order to ensure honest responses, the researchers not only followed standard protocols regarding anonymity and confidentiality, but also required both friends to agree—verbally, and in front of each other. These friendship pairs were then separated, and each member of each pair was asked a series of questions related to his or her romantic feelings toward the friend with whom they were taking the study.

The results suggest large gender differences in how men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa. Men were also more likely than women to think that their opposite-sex friends were attracted to them. In fact, men’s estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do with how the men themselves felt.

Males assumed that any romantic attraction they experienced was mutual, and were blind to the actual level of romantic interest felt by their female friends. Women, too, were blind to the mindset of their opposite-sex friends; because females generally were not attracted to their male friends, they assumed that this lack of attraction was mutual. As a result, men consistently overestimated the level of attraction felt by their female friends and women consistently underestimated the level of attraction felt by their male friends.

RESEARCH OF ANALYSIS OF CELL PHONE

An analysis of 1.95 billion cell phone calls and 489 million text messages reveal how men and women follow different relationship patterns during their lifetimes. The researchers argue that women's friendships in particular drive the process of finding a mate and supporting the next generation.

A team of researchers examined cell phone data from a single provider in an undisclosed European country. The researchers worked with data gathered over a seven-month time frame and restricted themselves to studying communications between cell phone users of a known age and sex, making a data set of about 3.2 million subscribers, or about 20 percent of the nation's cell phone users. Working on the assumption that close friends communicate most frequently, the team analyzed the top three friendships of each cell phone user based on the frequency of communication to spot patterns in the average male or female user at various ages.

The data revealed that an individual's best friend, particularly in one's 20s and 30s, happens to be someone of the opposite sex and a similar age. In addition, striking differences exist in how men and women communicate with their presumed romantic partner. For one, the man in a woman's life was her very best friend for roughly 15 years, compared with seven years in the case for men.

EFFECT OF MASS MEDIA ON MALE FEMALE RELATIONS

Gender socialization occurs through four major agents: family, education, peer groups, and mass media. Because mass media has enormous effects on our attitude and behavior, notably in regards to aggression, it is an important contributor to the socialization process. This is particularly true with regards to gender. In television and movies, women tend to have less significant roles than men. They are often portrayed as wives or mothers, rather than as main characters. When women are given a lead role, they are often one of two extremes: either a wholesome, saint-like figure or a malevolent, hyper-sexual figure. 

Women almost exclusively appear in ads that promote cooking, cleaning, or childcare-related products. In general, women are underrepresented in roles, or ads, that reference leadership, intelligence, or a balanced psyche. In music videos, women are objectified and portrayed as only existing to serve men. They wear little clothing and are walked around on leashes by men.

They mostly advertise cosmetics, but they also appear in the commercials directed to men. When a beautiful woman accepts and praises the male cosmetics, it is treated by men as a guarantee of its quality. 

Male stereotypes are also various. The first model is “a real man”, athletic, successful, professional, seducer with a beautiful woman by his side. Men generally advertise cars, cigarettes, business products or investments He also has a branded car and a smart phone.

If men and women appear in the commercials together, they are mainly presented as a couple or marriage. A sexual subtext is also often used in this case, even if the advertised product has nothing in common with the erotic sphere. 

Therefore, adolescent create cognitive schemes, which are certain representations of the reality displaying its most typical and fundamental elements and properties. These schemes are responsible for defining the essence of our worldview and have a significant influence on social cognition – understanding, anticipation, and situation and emotion control.

These schemes lead adolescent to believe that having a relationship with opposite sex is necessary and not being in relationship is something to be ashamed of.

EFFECT OF SOCIAL NETWORK ON MALE FEMALE RELATIONS

Social networks have become a global phenomenon and attracted extensive population from all around the world in different ages, cultures, education levels, etc. In addition to routinely checking e-mails, reading daily forums and newspapers or following instant message tools, people now also check their social network profiles by following others’ status changes, updating their profiles or looking at others’ profiles.

Research has shown that many people connect to social network sites at least once a day either to check their profiles or to participate in different online activities.

People use social network sites for a variety of reasons among which ease of use, allowing rapid updating, analyzing and sharing the continuously increasing information, reflecting on daily life, establishing and maintaining spontaneous social contacts and relationships, supporting informal learning practices with interaction and communication and facilitating delivery of education are the leading ones.

Most of the social network users are young individuals most of whom are university students. Hence, social network sites are considered to play an active role in younger generation’s daily lives

Various researchers have studied users’ purposes in using social networks. Social networks can be used for passing time, learning about other people, maintaining social relations. Social network can be oriented towards work- related contexts, establishing new relationships, or reaching those with shared interests such as in music or politics. Users can share their personal information with the help of their profile page, connect with other users, upload, tag and share multimedia content they have created, link others to a variety of accessible content, initiate or join sub-sets of common interest groups.

So, it can be suggested that, most of the studies stated that, people maintain their relations with social networks in which they formed or joined new networks to make new friends. It is noticeable that people generally tend to keeping in touch with friends, maintaining their relations or making new friends. This type of social networking often lead adolescent to indulge in relationships with opposite gender 

METHODOLOGY

Our study was about the “Effects of MODREN NETWORKING on male female interaction and relationships.” Young adolescents are more likely to interact and build relations with opposite sex.

SAMPLE:

We chose students of Fatima Jinnah University and Wah University as our sample. Their ages ranges from 18-23 years.

INSTRUMENT:

We chose survey as our research instrument. We made a closed ended questionnaire with the options of Yes or No to analyze the result.

LOCALE:

The locale we chose was Fatima Jinnah University and Wah University.

NUMBER OF PEOPLE:

The number of people who participated in our survey was about 20.

PROCEDURE:

We took 20 students as our sample, 10 boys and 10 girls in the area of Fatima Jinnah University and Wah University and gave survey questionnaire to them. After they filled the survey we analyzed their results which we have mentioned in our project.

RESULT ANALYSIS

From the result it is cleared that there is a great impact of social networks and mass media on male and female relationships. Relationships are influenced by social media (face book, TV channels). There are some archetype believes prevailing in a society about relationships such as proposal is most appropriate if from males, girls are more relationship oriented etc.

Qualitative analysis

The study reveals that people now a day are indulge more in relationships than before. They want to be having girlfriend or boyfriend not only for sharing themselves but it is in fashion that you might have some kind of commitment or relation in modern era.

Most of the influence of the mass media on interpersonal relationship is due to the powerful influence of advertisements. Commercial messages influence how people feel about themselves and their image to others. Commercial messages influence what a person's expectations are about themselves, about others and about what their lives should be like.

People are particular about their partners and they want them as shown on media. They mostly want them to make their leisure time relaxing and amusing. In present situation, sincerity is not as much worthy as of time pass. These kinds of relationships are mostly physical rather than spiritual .Most of the people think that male and female can be friends without building affectionate feelings for each other but generally it is not possible.

Quantitative analysis

Positive answer to our survey	48.5%
Negative answer to our survey	51.5%

Do you think being in a relationship is a bad thing?	5	15
Do you think social networks e.g. face book play a role in male female interaction?	18	2
Do you think proposal is only acceptable if it is from males?	3	17
Do you think it is odd that you don’t have boy friend/girl friend when your every friend is in a relationship?	1	19
Do you think boy and a girl can be friends?	17	3
Do you think mass media expresses right roles of male and female relationship?	4	16
People are having more than one relationship at the same time because of media. Do you agree?	16	4
1.     Do you agree that being in a relationship is just a fashion now days?	16	4
2.     Do you think it is women responsibility to be more relationship oriented?	6	14
10. In most of the cases boys misunderstand the relationship. Do you agree?	11	9

DISCUSSION

The result of our study shows that there is a great impact of mass media and social networking on male and female relationships. Mass media influence relationship in many ways. It has created some archetype believes among people.

95% of the people said that it is not bad to be in a relationship that if they have any commitment with someone then it is okay with them. Along with this, one of the questions reveals that 80% of the people accept that they indulge themselves in more than one relationship and they feel it.

People think that it is women responsibility to be relationship oriented as the reason is that women are caring and having soft heart so they understand, the problems around them, better.

Although people believe that the media is not expressing right roles of male female relationship and think that the role media project is somehow not true but still whether unintentionally, they are following those roles in their daily lives as people agree that relationships are fashion and people are indulged in more than one relationship now-a-days.

It is seen that in most cases males perceive relationship wrong and take it as a commitment. As  mentioned in the research of cell phone analysis we see that men take less years to finally indulge in relationship with opposite sex while girl take almost double time period as that of boys.

People do believe that social networks play a major role in interaction of male and females and they act as a catalyst to male female relations.

So, we can say that in most of the cases social networks do have an impact on male female interaction and people do follow it as a fashion whether intentionally or unintentionally.

CONCLUSION

There is an impact of social network and media on adolescents. Because they feel that they are following fashion of modern era. Although they do not agree with the roles that are being projected and do agree that some things are just fashion. They still follow some of the roles unintentionally. So, we can say that there is definitely an impact of social networks and media on male female interactions and relationships.