Love & Relationships in The Digital Era

We live in a world dominated by technology. In this environment, how have relationships and love been affected? The purpose of this research is to examine the possibility of maintaining meaningful connections and ultimately love, in a society saturated with dating applications and accessible pornography. The two themes driving this argument are the “emotional” and the “physical”. The former will be considered through an in-depth exploration of what constitutes an authentic relationship through the lens of Existentialist philosophy, further articulated by contemporary philosophers from A. Ben-Ze’ev to Alain de Botton to W. Helm. The latter is articulated through an analysis of Austin’s speech act framework of locutionary and illocutionary acts as applied to pornography. My findings ultimately sustain the claim that technology has affected the way we love and engage in relationships by promoting power imbalances and through a constant perpetuation of identity delusions