Abstract: Socialization, as a complex social phenomenon, combines multiple elements such as emotional communication, resource sharing and interactive participation. In today’s society, with the continuous upgrading of social tools, some young people’s social desire is declining. They not only try to avoid ineffective social interaction, but also actively seek like-minded "partners". On the one hand, the internal motivation of some young people’s social degradation stems from the increase of alternative choices of intellectual goals and emotional goals, on the other hand, it is the result of the change and evolution of social models in the internet age. In order to improve young people’s deep communication ability, it is necessary to systematically optimize social networks, strengthen the complementarity and integration of online and offline social relations, and then guide young people to shift from self-centered shallow social interaction to deep social interaction with interactive subjects as the core.
Keywords: social degradation, deep communication, weak relationship, light socialization [Chinese library classification number] C913 [document identification code] a
Individuals living in a specific social and cultural environment will inevitably form various relationships and establish various contacts with the surrounding people. At present, with the continuous upgrading of social tools, some young people’s social desire is declining. They not only try to avoid ineffective social interaction, but also actively seek like-minded "partners". More and more "post-90s" and "post-00s" think that they are "afraid of society". "It is difficult to meet friends" has become a normal life, and the agreement of "meeting once in a while" seems extravagant, and making a dinner is a kind of "life-and-death friendship". It is particularly noteworthy that more and more young people "enjoy" living alone. They construct and maintain their social networks through mobile phones, and rely on "partners" to exchange low emotional input for efficient and accurate social feedback. For some young people who have been immersed in weak ties and lightweight social activities for a long time, how to improve their personal deep communication ability has become a problem worth pondering.
The upgrade of social tools and the decline of social desire
Socialization, as a complex social phenomenon, combines multiple elements such as emotional communication, resource sharing and interactive participation. Social culture, as a mirror image of group spirit and values, its evolution is particularly striking. What people want from relationships and whether the content they want will change with the times is an interesting question. As one of the greatest inventions of mankind, the Internet has brought great development and changes to human society. Information is transmitted quickly, communication efficiency is greatly improved, and everyone can become a "protagonist". With the iterative update of social tools, the connection between people becomes closer and closer, and the social network becomes more complex and closely connected. However, the continuous upgrading of social tools has failed to significantly promote the synchronous growth of people’s social ability and desire, on the contrary, it has prompted some young people’s social desire to gradually decline, and shallow and lightweight social interaction has become one of the mainstream phenomena of contemporary youth social interaction. Traditional social communication emphasizes participating in all kinds of social activities, making more contacts, gaining more people’s affirmation, appreciation and support, and seeking the positive effect of self-existence. At present, some young people prefer to avoid ineffective social activities and pursue the balance between depth and quality.
There are rich social capital and interpersonal capital in interpersonal communication and interaction, and individuals need to accumulate these capitals continuously in social life in order to obtain instrumental or emotional social support. The larger the network of interpersonal communication, the richer the interpersonal capital. Of course, in addition to the network scale, network location, network differences, network density, etc. are all manifestations of individual interpersonal capital and social capital. In other words, the higher the network position occupied by individuals, the richer the interpersonal resources; The higher the network density, the stronger the interpersonal resources. Therefore, individual interpersonal capital and social capital need to be established, maintained, mobilized and expanded through interpersonal networks. For example, in the "one cup after another" dinner party, smiling faces, caring and asking questions, pushing cups for a change, and observing the world are all tools and carriers for thickening interpersonal relationships. However, contemporary young people have reservations about this, and they are more inclined to avoid this social form that may bring burdens.
So, do young people really no longer need social interaction? It’s too early to jump to conclusions. The current "partner culture" is an example. There are food partners, travel partners, sports partners, and even baby walkers, shopping partners and weight-loss partners … … Through social platforms, young people can "take" everything. A survey report on young people’s social interaction shows that more than half of them have a partner, while among the 31% young people who don’t, more than half still want a partner. The "partner culture" advocates that you don’t have to be intimate, have a little taste, take it with you, have fun, and don’t have to deliberately and painstakingly maintain mutual friendship, starting with common interests and ending with cooperation. Looking for "partners" is not to socialize with acquaintances, but to socialize lightly with strangers, maintain a certain sense of border with each other, and refuse to be bound by sticky emotions. If traditional interpersonal communication is based on blood, career and geography, then "On the other hand, it is based on the interest margin, with the help of the cross-time platform of the network, and because of the common hobbies and interests, it forms a "social community" with a certain degree of fit. The "partner culture" is more of a fragmented social interaction, which requires time coincidence, space equivalence, free form and simple combination, so the maintenance cost is low and there is no need to invest a lot of time, money and emotional value. These free and casual "partners" can be short-term or long-term, without too much emotional involvement, self-centered, voluntary as the principle, and always to meet their own needs.
Socialization can include both "face to face", that is, face-to-face emotional communication, and "side by side", that is, jointly carrying out activities or completing a cooperation. If the traditional friendship model pays attention to "face to face", the preferred social way for young people today is "shoulder to shoulder". The theory of American psychologist Atkinson and others points out that the motives that affect people’s social interaction are both affinity and intimacy. Affinity needs are the inherent desire of individuals to seek and maintain positive interpersonal relationships. People long for the company of others and are eager to be with others. Intimacy needs to seek higher quality companionship, communication, sharing and disclosure on the basis of affinity needs, which requires the predictability, stability and intimacy of the communication object. If friendship seeking stems from intimacy needs, then the current youth’s preferred social way is based on affinity needs. Although the form has changed, the essence of socialization as a basic human need has not changed, but it is presented in a more diverse and flexible way.
Internal causes of social degradation of some young people
On the one hand, social tools are constantly changing and upgrading, on the other hand, the social desire of young people is quietly declining; On the one hand, young people refuse to socialize ineffectively, on the other hand, they are eager to find a partner. This phenomenon can not help but make people think deeply: does this indicate some alienation of social practice?
The alternative choices of intellectual goals and emotional goals have increased. As a social phenomenon coexisting with human civilization, interpersonal relationship is essentially a psychological contract established by people seeking spiritual resonance and satisfaction in common activities. This kind of contract will show different characteristics with the advancement of human social life cycle. Selman, an American psychologist, found that children are in 3-mdash; When I was 7 years old, I needed temporary playmates without distinction, but my communication was self-centered. After that, it entered the stage of one-way help, and friendship began to be built on the basis of mutual assistance; After entering adolescence, teenagers expect to have deep emotional communication with each other and form close interdependence. In essence, people are social animals, and social communication is very important for human beings, but people’s social interests and social attachment will continue to evolve. People’s social activities can be divided into two goals: one is the goal of knowledge acquisition, which aims to acquire knowledge and information through social activities, plan their careers, establish new social networks, and expect the social relationship to bring compensatory returns in the future; The other is the goal of emotional management, which aims to regulate emotions through social activities, pursue spiritual comfort and satisfaction, and obtain positive emotional value. It is worth noting that under the current background of the times, youth groups have more and more alternative programs in pursuit of these two goals.
On the one hand, the goals pursued by youth groups in social life are more selective, and they give priority to emotional management goals that bring positive value and significance, while social activities aimed at knowledge acquisition goals gradually decrease due to the increase of various alternatives. The Internet has created a brand-new economic model and global market, which has brought great convenience to social life. Smart logistics, sharing economy, online education, information search, online medical care, and even AI assistants can all become personal work assistants, and the user’s stickiness is significantly enhanced. Information that used to be obtained through acquaintance networks can now be easily obtained with one click. With the gradual increase of alternative choices, young people gradually dilute the demand orientation of knowledge acquisition goals in social interaction. Knowledge acquisition, decision-making, information understanding and daily service, which can be generated through interpersonal activities, can be obtained from the network, and it is faster and more convenient without paying interpersonal costs.
On the other hand, although the goal of emotional management is still highly valued among young people, its realization mode is gradually changing to the weak network relationship. Friendship is the interdependence and attachment between individuals, which can provide support and help for each other. Originated from interpersonal attraction, it is a special and scarce emotional resource produced in social communication activities, which is different from general goodwill or appreciation and is an interactive and two-way positive emotion. Friendship needs to maintain trust, trust and talk to each other and express emotional support. As "Internet aborigines", young people grow up with the online world, and the network gives the related individuals more subjectivity and freedom. Some young people living in the digital age are not used to the traditional face-to-face communication, but are more used to looking for emotional sustenance in the online world. Although the light emotional comfort of online social interaction can meet the temporary needs, it is also easy to lead to the establishment of temporary relationships, which may breed emotional indifference. In order to fill the inner emptiness, some young people have to seek more exciting entertainment activities and extreme experiences, which may affect their deep understanding and pursuit of the meaning of life to some extent.
The changes and evolution of social interaction in the Internet age are remarkable and profound. Aristotle believes that friendship can be divided into three types: friendship based on utility, friendship based on pleasure and friendship based on virtue. People are always looking for friendship based on pleasure and friendship based on utility. In the process of China’s social transformation from an agricultural society to a digital society, the choice scope and mode of social relations have undergone essential changes. In agricultural society, people form social ties by blood relationship and clan relationship, support each other at important moments and face the ups and downs of life together. Guan Zhong’s friendship with Bao Shuya, Bo Ya’s friendship with his children, Lian Po’s friendship with Lin Xiangru, paradigm and Zhang Shao’s friendship with chickens and millet, and Yang Jiaoai’s friendship with Zuo Botao & HELIP; … Let people feel the mellow friendship of "a glass of wine in the spring breeze of peaches and plums, a lamp in the night rain of rivers and lakes for ten years", which is characterized by high tacit understanding, high dependence, high commitment, high intimacy and irreplaceability.
It is worth noting that the principles of friendship and socialization are constantly evolving under the influence of culture. Traditional society is based on relationship, and multiple relationships such as consanguinity and geography are intertwined. People seek security and resources in a complex network of relationships. Strong relationships are stable and lasting, so people are willing to make long-term investments in strong relationships. Traditional human relations are based on long-term, stable and harmonious, and follow the norms of human relations. However, the social support power brought by strong relations in modern society is gradually declining, and its reciprocal function is gradually weakening. Human social communication is similar to a complex network structure, which is composed of the relationships between different nodes. Each node is a different individual or organization, and the social network is the social relations and social contacts between people. These relationships and connections, from alienation to closeness, from strangeness to familiarity, are deeply embedded in economic actions. Strong relationships are manifested in people who are closely connected and have more interactions, such as family, friends and close colleagues; Weak relationships are relatively loose, including peers who connect through social media, with limited interaction and low intimacy. However, weak relationships show unique advantages in information transmission and knowledge resource acquisition, and become an important way for information exchange between different groups and organizations. Although the interaction frequency is low, the intimacy and reciprocity are insufficient, the effectiveness of weak relationships in information sharing and interpersonal communication often goes beyond the scope of strong relationships.
The rise of the Internet has changed the way people communicate, broken through the limitation of spatial distance, and provided convenience for the rapid establishment of weak relationships. In this context, friendship, as a strong relationship symbol of long-term commitment, needs a deep emotional foundation and common values; The "partner" has the characteristics of short-term and flexible weak relationship. The strong relationship of long-term commitment needs deep understanding, similar values, education level and intelligence level, mutual friendship needs and attraction, and it takes a certain amount of time and energy to maintain emotional links. However, starting from hobbies, "partners" only need to pay attention to certain costs and risks, and do not need to embed too many responsibilities, obligations and rules. They can not only obtain the expected interpersonal value at a small cost, but also keep in touch with more strangers at the same time, which meets the needs of modern people for fast and convenient social interaction. It can be said that the social trend under the weak relationship tends to be more calm, rational and even a little rough, which reflects the diversity and complexity of social relations in the internet age.
How do young people improve their ability of deep communication?
Relationship, as one of people’s basic needs, profoundly affects people’s cognitive model, emotional state and behavior choice. As Marx pointed out: "The essence of human beings is not an abstract thing inherent in a single person. In reality, it is the sum of all social relations. " Man is neither an abstract person nor a person in the biological sense of pure nature, but the sum of social relations, so he must be in a certain social relationship and interpersonal relationship and become a practical, living and realistic person. China is undergoing a profound social transformation. Do young people still need deep communication in the current situation of weak relationship and light social interaction? How to improve the ability of deep communication?
Systematically optimize social networks. From the perspective of social communication structure, any communication has two dimensions: time and space, and the time dimension is related to the continuity of communication, that is, people expect the long-term or short-term communication time; Spatial dimension is reflected in individual selectivity. The traditional communication mode is characterized by the fixed relationship between long-range and low selectivity and the friendship relationship between long-range and high selectivity. Long-term fixed relationship pays attention to the permanence of relationship and emphasizes the persistence of emotion; The short-range agreement emphasizes the value of cooperation at this moment, and pays attention to mind and freedom, communication and contract, equality and cooperation. In modern society, people pursue self-independence and are eager to keep a certain distance from others, but they still need a lot of emotional satisfaction and warmth that can only be conveyed by people present. Therefore, we should strike a clever balance between short-range and long-range, which requires both short-range contractual communication and long-range friendship, and systematically optimize social networks to alleviate the loneliness of modern people.
Online and offline, strong and weak relationships overlap with each other. Strong relationship and weak relationship, online and offline, are not independent of each other, but can produce compensation effect. If the strong relationship is emotional and the weak relationship is intellectual, then the social relationship of young people should constantly strengthen the overlap of weak relationship and strong relationship, and the complementarity of online relationship and offline relationship. Strong relationships are stable and profound, provide important emotional needs to meet, and weak relationships are heterogeneous, which can realize rapid information transmission and accelerate the expansion of social relationships, especially the role of information sharing between organizations is remarkable. Instead of replacing offline social interaction, online social interaction has broken the geographical and spatial restrictions to a certain extent, and at the same time, it can further improve the quality of communication, increase the frequency of interpersonal interaction and broaden the scope of offline communication.
From self-centered shallow socialization to deep socialization of interactive subjects. Liang Shuming said in the book "The Essentials of China Culture": "When a person is born, there will be people (parents, brothers, etc.) related to him, and he will always live in the department related to others (can not be separated from society), so that we can know that life actually exists on various relationships … … When you come out to the society, you have mentors and apprentices in teaching; In the economy, there are east partners; In politics, there are officials, officials and people; Usually go back and forth more, support each other in times of trouble, and have neighbors and friends. With the development of a person’s age and life, there is an endless relationship between them in all directions. " The important value of deep communication lies in forming a stable emotional contract. The closer the interpersonal relationship is, the more stable the social and psychological support individuals feel. In modern society, emotional transmission and emotional satisfaction still have important value, which can maximize the positive emotional experience and reduce the risk of negative emotions. In other words, people who have more high-quality intimate relationships have a better quality of life and are more likely to have a longer life track. Studies have found that social interaction can improve people’s health and happiness, because it helps the endocrine system, blood circulation system and immune system of both parties. On the contrary, isolated and lonely individuals often feel unhappy.
To sum up, the starting point of shallow socialization is self, and the ultimate demand is self-satisfaction, while deep socialization is interactive. In addition to considering the pleasure and comfort of self, we should also take into account the feelings and emotions of others, and we need to reach understanding and love in empathy. People form noble character in the process of dedication, care, responsibility, respect and understanding, which is a reflection and answer to self-survival. This also reflects what Marx said, "Only love can be exchanged for love, and only trust can be exchanged for trust".
(The author is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Social Studies, Nankai University)
[Note: This article is the phased achievement of the key project of the National Social Science Foundation (project number: 21ASH011)]
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Editor/Sun Kemei Editor/Chen Yuanyuan
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