User:JLM003/sandbox

Cyber Relationship Addiction
Cyber-Relationship addiction is one impulse-control problem that is covered within Internet Addiction Disorder also known as (IAD). It has been supported through different theories and articles over the years such as Ramdhonee’s, Psychological impact of internet usage on children and adolescents and Young’s Internet addiction: Symptoms, evaluation and treatment.

A Cyber-Relationship Addiction has been described as, the addiction to social networking in all forms. Social Networking such as Facebook, Online dating service such as Uniform Dating.com along with many other communication platforms, creating a place to communicate with new people. Virtual online friends start to gain more communication and importance over time to the person becoming more important than real-life family and friends.

Cyber-Relationships are in essence a virtual relationship or form of communication between two people. Visuals are removed as it is communication through text, all you know of a person is what they are communicating to you and what is displayed on their profile. Some People, “will be attracted to the silent, less visually stimulating, non-tactile quality of text relationships - which may be true for some people struggling to contain the over-stimulation of past trauma. A person's ambivalence about intimacy may be expressed in text communication because it is a paradoxical blend of allowing people to be honest and feel close, while also maintaining their distance. People suffering with social anxiety or issues regarding shame and guilt may be drawn to text relationships because they cannot be seen. Some people even prefer text because it enables them to avoid the issue of physical appearance which they find distracting or irrelevant to the relationship. Without the distraction of in-person cues, they feel they can connect more directly to the mind and soul of the other person. Text becomes a transitional space, an extension of their mind that blends with the extension of the other person’s mind".

Issues within Cyber-Relationship Addiction
Cyber-Relationships can often be more intense then real-life relationships, causing addiction to the relationship. With the ability to create whole new persona's, people can often deceive the person they are communicating with. Everyone is looking for a the perfect companion but the perfect companion online is not always the perfect companion in real-life. Although two people can commit to a Cyber-relationship, offline one of them could not be the person they are claiming to be online. In fact their true identity could reveal them to be married with three children.

"Catfish"
There are people who are deliberately creating fake personal profiles online with the intention of tricking a unsuspecting person into falling in love with them. These people are known as "Catfish" The term "Catfish" has come from the title of a documentary film released in 2010, in which New York Photographer Nev Schulman discovers the woman he'd been continuing a Cyber-Relationship with had not been honest whilst describing herself. From the releases of the film in 2010, Nev and his team joined up with MTV and created Catfish: The TV Show with the first Season Premiere in 2012. Catfish: The TV Show is enabling young couples take their online romances into the real world. What will happen when they meet in person for the first time? Executive producer Tom Forman says: Whether or not two people are totally lying to each other and it turns out to be a huge disaster, that’s only the first part of the story. We then want to know why they are doing it, who they are, what they are feeling, what led them to this place, and why that resonates with thousands of other young people who have the same feelings, who don’t have someone to talk to or don’t know how to express themselves".

References: