Revolution of Media vs. Evolution of Love

     As we know, generation alteration is the natural law of life that is unchangeable, but how much do we realize that our love to our life partner is being affected by media? Media affects us in all our life aspects, including our affinity towards our lover.

Couples today have a very large difference from last generation despite of culture variations. The changes do not happen in a blink. Subsequently, media affects us day by day and it actually accelerates the evolution of our perception towards love. As media exposes many sexual related information, public are relatively more open towards sex (Brown, Greenberg,& Buerkel, 1993). In addition to that, the average age of having first relationship has decreases as media often portrays young couples in an acceptable way. However, media that portrays young couples too lead to controversy such as "Juno" in United States and "Jenny, Juno" in Korea.

("Jenny, Juno" - A Korean movie on 15 years old teenage pregnancy)

When media creates gap to couples of different generation, digital gap in media also attributes to unequal woman status in a relationship in different countries. As media in developed country portrays independent woman image, the perception towards the role expectation in a relationship changes. Consequently, female status in a couple’s relationship is dramatically evolves to a more advance position. Interactivity of media allows nationwide discussion of woman’s need in a relationship which changes the woman’s passive attitude to a more active attitude in constructing a relationship.

In relevant to that, media also contributes to maintain a long distance relationship. Far distance relationships have never been so easy by using social network to connect far-apart intimate couples. Baron (1998) indicates that internet is the ideal tool contributing in building or maintaining a social relationship. Compare to last generation where couples can only contact through phone line which are much more costly than internet, we made a revolution by bringing two people closer.

(Major social network logos)

In conclusion, media penetrates our life by all aspects through communication in one way, mass media, or both ways, niche media. Thus, whether we like it or not, media is definitely changing our perception towards love physically or psychologically.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6joTk9v19HE&feature=youtu.be

References:

Baron, N. (1998). Letters by phone or speeches by other means: the linguistics of e-mail. Language and Communication, 18. 133-70.