People-Nearby Applications (PNAs) are always more used to meet new people, whether for friendships and/or romantic dating. Relying on mobile devices GPS, their peculiarity is to give individuals the chance to find new people to meet based on their geographical proximity (Toch & Levi, 2013). Due to this, PNAs could integrate the “traditional” streets within the cities, as common spaces where everyone has the chance to get unplanned encounters and meet a lot of different people who lives nearby yet is still unknown (Toch & Levi, 2013). Thus, they could represent a way to overcome the individualism, mistrust, indifference, closure and defence processes that characterize modern communities (Procentese, Scotto di Luzio, Natale, 2011; Schmitz, 2016). As a first step towards this new perspective about PNAs, our study aims to verify whether a relationship between relational motivations towards PNAs use and individuals’ offline loneliness exists. An online questionnaire including the Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults (SELSA-S, Ditommaso, Brannen, & Best, 2004) and the Cyber Relationships Motives Scale (Wang & Chang, 2010) was administered to 647 PNAs users aged between 18 and 67 (M = 26.76, SD = 8.77). Social and romantic loneliness emerged as predictors for the search for love and the desire to meet new people when perceiving offline constraints, but not for the simple desire to meet new people. With individuals’ loneliness potentially being expression of some unsatisfied relational needs (e.g. aggregation, romantic, social ones) within the communities of belonging, these results suggest that PNAs could rather offer a different space to satisfy them while remaining anchored to one’s offline local community (Procentese & Gatti, 2019). Indeed, due to the GPS features, PNAs could become new aggregation “places” within local communities, wherein individuals can find new people to meet nearby overcoming the constraints perceived within modern communities.
People-Nearby Applications As New “Places” To Recover The Social And Aggregation Functions Within Local Communities / Gatti, Flora; Procentese, Fortuna. - (2019). (Intervento presentato al convegno SCRA 17th Biennial Conference “Making an Impact Ecological Praxis: System Complexity, Cycles of Action, and Extending our Metaphors with the Natural World” tenutosi a National Louis University, Chicago nel 26-29 Giugno).
People-Nearby Applications As New “Places” To Recover The Social And Aggregation Functions Within Local Communities
Flora Gatti
;Fortuna Procentese
2019
Abstract
People-Nearby Applications (PNAs) are always more used to meet new people, whether for friendships and/or romantic dating. Relying on mobile devices GPS, their peculiarity is to give individuals the chance to find new people to meet based on their geographical proximity (Toch & Levi, 2013). Due to this, PNAs could integrate the “traditional” streets within the cities, as common spaces where everyone has the chance to get unplanned encounters and meet a lot of different people who lives nearby yet is still unknown (Toch & Levi, 2013). Thus, they could represent a way to overcome the individualism, mistrust, indifference, closure and defence processes that characterize modern communities (Procentese, Scotto di Luzio, Natale, 2011; Schmitz, 2016). As a first step towards this new perspective about PNAs, our study aims to verify whether a relationship between relational motivations towards PNAs use and individuals’ offline loneliness exists. An online questionnaire including the Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults (SELSA-S, Ditommaso, Brannen, & Best, 2004) and the Cyber Relationships Motives Scale (Wang & Chang, 2010) was administered to 647 PNAs users aged between 18 and 67 (M = 26.76, SD = 8.77). Social and romantic loneliness emerged as predictors for the search for love and the desire to meet new people when perceiving offline constraints, but not for the simple desire to meet new people. With individuals’ loneliness potentially being expression of some unsatisfied relational needs (e.g. aggregation, romantic, social ones) within the communities of belonging, these results suggest that PNAs could rather offer a different space to satisfy them while remaining anchored to one’s offline local community (Procentese & Gatti, 2019). Indeed, due to the GPS features, PNAs could become new aggregation “places” within local communities, wherein individuals can find new people to meet nearby overcoming the constraints perceived within modern communities.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
