Connected, But Alone: Negative Impacts Of Technology On Human Communication

In Sherrie Turkle’s TED talk 'Connected, but Alone?” she claims that technology not only changes what we do, rather it changes who we are. The human aspect of real-life communication is necessarily important for today’s modern society. The communication we have using our social is often overlooked, what we have in the virtual world requires a human or real-life communication. By that, people will become the scarcest resource to what we are experiencing today. I certainly agree that as the use of technology increases, so human contact will diminish.

Technology has become a normal part of the world. Within a minute, we can do things such as to listen to a new song, stream live performances and mingle with others. Years ago, this would have been regarded as miraculous, now we take it for granted because we get too familiar with it. Most updates on Facebook are about our own fascinating lives, to an extent where we share photos which we figure prominently. It is not perhaps the nicest thing to say, but most people are interested first and foremost in themselves. What technology should have been doing is to simply serve and add efficiency to the basic recipe of communicating. Although, it is true that these screens we have offer information to a range we don’t expect, not everything will happen online.

As people spend more time communicating online, they will be much more likely to no longer sufficient to ensure survival to personal or face-to-face socializing. We adore the concept of socializing but are also demurred to take part. We tend to remove ourselves from the actual happenings surrounding us to customize what we want to communicate. Although humans are capable of adding emotion through the use of variety emojis, stickers, GIFs and other graphical representations; a purely online relationship runs the risk of becoming secluded to his or herself. We’ve become settled to the way we handled things mostly on the virtual world to the extent that we wanted more from it.

At a certain moment in time, we expect technology will come to have a feeling of empathy. But computers do not even come close to comparing with humans in emotional matters. People will always be needed to provide emotional content to feel peace in mind or solitude within themselves. People expect more from technology and less from each other. We are not yet irrelevant; nor are we ever likely to be. Even so, communicating effectively and building common ground are some examples that humans can do. Technology has indeed come a very long way.

Relating it with our current situation, we seek for technology for when we are most vulnerable. Everyone’s concern is always working with the most up-to-date information yet too secluded to interact personally. We are trying to tamper the loneliness we feel by just having a mere connection than a real conversation. When in fact, instead of using the social media we could’ve gone to a friend’s house or to a coffee shop to talk about the things that bothered us the most. If this situation continues, we set ourselves up to isolation. But as Turkle says, solitude can be seen as a good thing. It is where we find ourselves so we can reach out to find other people and make a connection (Turkle, 2012). From this perspective, solitude adds value to effective communication even with the use of technology.

To sum up, the use of social media has become part of our daily routine for people to become too familiar with it. It is certainly true that as the number of its users' increases, so is contact between people diminish. The virtual world does not only changes what we do, but it changes who we are. Also, people should've had a different perspective when it comes to solitude. From that, technology can lead us back to our own lives instead of being secluded to ourselves.