Does Technology Make Us More Alone and Why

As humans are cruising through the modern era, technology had changed the perception of humans drastically on their lifestyle, relationships, stay connected with family and friends. Technology brought distance communications closer and momentary with high quality and speed, reliable, affordable and readily available. However, does technology make us alone? Modern technologies like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc., have brought people closer and stay connected. It is a new and effective way to socialize and stay connected with people. These technologies had brought many people connected after no communication for decades.

However, people are getting dependent on technology for too much. People are choosing in texting, chatting with friends and family members to whom they are in relatively closer distances, instead of walking or driving over to meet them in person and have face to face conversations. Instead of promoting social life, technology is overruling our lifestyle and altering the true meaning of socialization.

Technology strongly influenced and brought a huge difference in the way social relationships are kept.

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As all the conversations are happening virtually true emotions, body language, voice tone, eye to eye contact, mannerisms are all hidden, which plays a huge role in terms of forming an opinion on one’s relationship. These social relationships are eliminating the need one on one or in-person conversations with the people, which doesn’t help in promoting the socialization. Often after communicating with a person on Facebook, snap chat, etc., and meet the person physically, these relationships lead to a tragedy. This is due to virtual conversations and communication did not either match with reality or one’s expectations.

People's personality on Facebook or Snapchat may always be hidden, people may never show their true personality, one’s honesty can be doubtful. Because of these characteristics when we meet the new friend on Facebook or Instagram in person, your expectations and opinion about that person may completely change and the meeting may put you in very uncomfortable situations. This has been constantly observed across different ages of humans and predominantly in children and teenagers. People from these age groups are easily attracted to modern technology and get more comfortable in maintaining connections with the people on these virtual communicating platforms. When they meet friends from these social platforms in person, they tend to be very shy, uncomfortable, silent and feel awkward.

Technology overruled the “in-person communications, discussions, meeting people physically”, it shuts us off from the true socialization. Due to readily available technology, people are isolating themselves from “in-person” meetings, interacting with new people when met physically. Pew research center conducted a study on teens and technology by Lenhart 2015. From the results of this research, it is evident that 70% of the teens are occupied in communicating with their friends and family on social media like Facebook, Snapchat rather than socializing in person or playing sports or involving themselves in outdoor activities. Only 25% of the teens are spending them in meeting their friends in person. As technology is evolving day to day, in-person communications are decreasing and virtual communications are increasing, this is leading to poor social skills and decrease the ability to speak effectively. Though they may be communicating online effectively and precisely, when they meet in person they are not able to present themselves in good regards. They are not able to express their feeling in the action and verbally, which is critical in maintaining relationships. Since they are failing to do so, relationships seem to become harder and harder to carry on for longer periods. Communications that took place in between took people has better chances to build the good bonding, expressing feelings are more transparent, in case of little misunderstanding in-person meetings gives a better chance of clarifying and sort the issues. Honesty, nature, behavior, mannerisms, expressions can be seen in in-person meetings, which add huge value for healthy relationships. Truth is humans are relying on technology more than they should be and making us live isolated and alone. Socializing on these high technological cyber platforms is not real and it is less humane.

Technology is voluntarily or involuntarily is pushing people to live isolated from others, eliminating the in-person interactions with friends and family. These days we all had observed kids playing games on tablets or cell phones while the entire family is having dinner at the dining table gathering, this can be easily observed in the modern family who had immediate access to the technology. A traditional family at a lunch gathering has dinner while talking to each other, giggle about the past interactions with another, share thoughts, etc., lead a healthier lifestyle and happy living. Group of teens hanging out in a group meeting are chatting or communications with friends on social media rather than enjoying the time with the friends around them. This is misleading us to get less connected to society and be less aware of the true meaning of life. The usage of the television is more these days than going out into nature. Play video games online, virtual games than going outdoors and play with friends and family friends. This virtual living is also decreasing the ability of humans to respond and save themselves or their friends and family members from life-threatening situations. Therefore, technology is making us feel alone whether it had come to one’s realization since it is isolating us from people day by day.

It is of no doubt technology made the communication very easy than ever before; it provides the huge opportunity and bigger platform to stay connected and reach out to people of similar interests in no time, though they are located at remote areas from one another, truly speaking they are apart, since they are isolating themselves from the surroundings and got caught up with the screen in front of them. Apart from teens and children getting addicted to the use of social platforms, it has been observed in adults as well. Where children seek attention and interactions from parents, they are occupied in the use of social platforms. There were reports from across the nation that many kids are experiencing the bad parenting one of the major reasons is parents not being able to give enough attention. They are spending more time on socializing on Facebook, snap chat, uploading photos to their profiles and neglect their kids. One side of this social networking is bringing all the people from across the globe on to one platform on the flip side, it is isolating you from the people right next to you.

To conclude, while technology is bringing people of similar interests together to one place and share like thoughts, feelings, it is steering us to isolate us from the people around themselves which is destroying real-life interaction. We are at critical times to pause our lives and rethink how to reduce the dependency on technology, use of technological devices and balance lives with more social in-person interactions.

Works Cited:

1. Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy by Siva Vaidyanathan
2. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now By Joran Lanier