The Big Question

• Sherry draws from her interviews, teaching, and clinical work to focus on how networking impacts high school and college students and how it changes parenting. As the use of smart phone with web access expands, Sherry admits that she is studying a moving target, and that she believes she is watching the future unfolding. Technology offers substitutes for connecting with each other face-to-face as we use a whole world of machine-mediated relationships. In the half-light of virtual community, we may feel utterly alone. New technologies allow us to dial down human contact. For some, texting put people not too close and not too far. As we distribute ourselves, we may abandon ourselves. The big question is: Does virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other kind and of all encounters of any kind?. It’s time to have this conversation.

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