This paper explores the impacts of the Internet, social networking sites, and online-relationships on self-definition, perspectives of reality, and mental health in contemporary times. The authors explain how computer-mediated communication seems to be the culmination of the time-space continuum endemic to modernity. The dynamic formation of the Internet sites has provided new ways of interpersonal interaction and communication that have created a highly impactful shift on the time-space continuum. This shift appears to transcend time as it creates a new sense of interpersonal connection in the virtual realm of cyberspace. Relationships that were previously established and sustained primarily through face-to-face interaction have come to be complemented by a social technology that is creating a new genre of interpersonal relationships. The article highlights contradictory views about how the use of the Internet affects intimacy, expands to another area, namely, romantic relationships. By use of social network sites, an increasing number of people are found to have online romantic relationships. Among these Facebook is a medium that brings people together who have shared interests. Three cases describe experiences of persons seeking psychiatric assistance who experienced depressive psychosis, hallucinations, insomnia and other stressful and disorienting experiences after Facebook relationships formed in virtual communities. Attempts to resolve discrepancies related to the emotional void resulting from differences between online virtual satisfaction of needs for love and actual offline absence of the so-called loved one are explored. We are providing three cases where psychopathology might be fostered with these new forms of media.
Key words: internet, self, social network, facebook, psychopathology
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