Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet Enables Intimacy

Mashable recently pulled together a fantastic post of the Top 5 Insightful TED Talks On Social Media which I highly recommend that you watch...

One of those most interesting to me was by Stefana Broadbent, a sociologist, who talks about her view of the impact of technology on intimacy and relationships.
The widely accepted view at the moment is that even though we as a global population are now more connected than ever, the quality and depth of those connections tend to be focused on shallow micro-interactions such as tweets, status updates and the ubiquitous text message...

However, Stefana disputes this and gives solid examples of how technology has in fact allowed us to become more connected at a more in-depth level and that communication devices such as mobile phones, computers and specific technology such as IM and Skype give us the opportunity to interact more regularly.

You can watch her talk here which is all of 9 minutes long. It's a really interesting and compelling alternative view which has certainly questioned the assumption that human relations are suffering due to the tech barrier: