Physical Environments for Digital Worlds?

To continue off of the Bagdy et al. (2018) article, I was very intrigued by the authors’ comment that the two seniors would become more involved with their social network communities as they became “physically situated” within those environments. I hear people talking about how we are creating these artificial or digital communities and that soon people will not interact with each other face to face. However, I think this finding proves against that. I am not convinced that an online community can survive without a physical manifestation at some point and in some capacity. For example, Crystal was a part of military social media groups, but until she actually joined the military and was around soldiers, she would not achieve that sense of belonging to the military community or at least the same level of belonging. Another example would be relationships that start on social media. There are different opinions of how long is too long to talk to someone and not meet them, but at some point, I think that in order for the relationship to go to the next step or become deeper, the two people have to meet.