Technology and Social Interaction

The spread of technology has had a negative impact on our everyday face to face interaction. Technology has made us lazy in the sense that we no longer feel like we need to interact with others because we can do it through a screen. When I chat with my friends our level of conversation is very low and generally not meaningful. We are losing the ability to meet people physically. For example, one of my friends didn’t want to engage in a physical conversation until he spoke with her through facebook. The first thing that went through my mine was “Are you kidding you wimp” I feel like this social networking sites allows users to feel more confident about themselves because it acts as a security system. If someone denies your friend request then you simply more one, if someone defriends you then you won’t have to worry about speaking to them ever again, through this public space your allowed to portrait a stronger character or even the ideal person. 

Technology is making us less efficient and its making us rely on the intelligence of machines instead of our own. The way things are moving students are going to be computer smart instead of book smart. For examinations they will be tested on how fast they find the answers online instead of how well they can articulate and apply their thoughts. Humanity will essentially become obsolete and just like 1984 machines will control society and our world will revolve around what technology dictates. Before we would say that without us technology won’t exist and now we question if we will survive without technology. I understand that the purpose of innovation is to improve and make our lives better, but not to the point where we will have computers plugged in our brains. It sounds ridiculous, but if you think about it you realize that Smartphone’s are becoming an addiction and this demand to have information accessible anywhere has driven the rapid technology of super powerful phones. In the direction we are headed how will our children’s phone look, computers, will our education system continue to lower its standards?

Personally to me meeting people through online networks is not the best way to find strong relationships. You can find really cool people, but not life time friends. Even though recently it’s been shown that a majority of the couples meet on online dating sites and most of them marry. However, a lot of them divorce so it makes you wonder how “real” these sites are. Another problem with this is that people can easily lie about their identity giving you a false impression on the contrary physically meeting people will give you a true understanding of who they are. A lot of people on facebook have hundreds of friends and if you ask the user if they now everyone they will most likely know less than a hundred people. Out of those you only communicate with fifty and out of those fifty you physically interact with twenty-five and out of those twenty-five ten are real friends. 

We need to stop looking at screen and start looking at faces. Because of all these new forms of interacting, the numbers of people who volunteer dropped; people attend less community meetings, social events, school board meetings, neighborhood meetings, etc. We are all individualizing instead of coming together are one society.