How Is Technology Changing the Self and Social Relations - Coursework Example

How is technology changing the self and social relations? Introduction: The advancement of technology has crept into our personal lives makingus completely dependent on the technologies. The technology has undoubtedly made our lives easier and improved communications. There are various viewpoints about the intrusion of technology in our private space. Many experts are of the view that technology has robbed our social relationships. The personal communication between friends and family has declined considerably due to the technology. The relations have lost their significance and become artificial. People spend their maximum time in the virtual world and are loosing pace of the real world. Internet and television, which are the products of technology, have been widely accepted and appreciated by the people. They have sure made our lives easier and faster. However theses two developments have also bought in few side effects with them. These sources are addictive and because of the convenience they provide people spend their maximum time over these. They develop and maintain relations and friendships over the virtual world. This brings in a negative impact on the social relationships of the individual. Though Internet makes communication easier it makes the life of the individual lonelier. People loose the personal touch in the social relationships. Studies have shown that heavy addiction to television and Internet leads to decline of social and local knowledge and interest of the individual. Charles Horton Cooley once said, “The social self is simply any idea, or system of ideas, drawn from the communicative life, that the mind cherishes as its own.”(Cooley) Different people have different perceptions about socializing. Some feel socializing over the Internet, telephone is good enough while some feel that these means are not the real ways of socializing. Socializing requires personal and face-to-face interactions between individuals to understand and empathize with each other’s life, which is completely missing in the technological aided methods of socializing. The technology has bought a sea change in the way we live, it has changed the way we interact and socialize with others. Though technology has made our lives simpler and Internet has made socializing easy and convenient, still the technology has a negative effect on the personal relations. (Postman 5,6) Technology and our social relations: The thoughts, interactions and decisions of a person are result of the personal characteristics and social environment. There is a strong relationship between the individual and social forces. A lot of our actions and decisions are dictated through social forces. Since the social relations affect the way interpret and look at the world as well as us, it is very important to have healthy social relationships. With the advent of rapid technological advancements, a lot of change has been brought into the way we socialize. The Internet chat rooms have substituted personal meetings and get-togethers. People find it more convenient to interact over the Internet and telephones. The technology has changed the perception of socializing and has provided a new dimension to it. People who were shy or had low self-esteem to interact in the public were provided with a great platform to express their views and ideas. Interactions with distant friends and people whom we do not know in real life have been possible only through technology. Expressing ideas and concerns about politics and other developments in the world has been made easier. People with similar thoughts can meet up ‘online’ and discuss the concerns; this was not possible without the advent of Internet. However with all these benefits, the technology has also equally helped in dampening of real relations. (Cooley). People are so used to the use of technology that they hardly give stress on personal meetings and conversations. The ‘online’ socializing though has many advantages still it can never make up for the feelings and emotions involved in the personal interactions. The messages received and sent over the telephone or Internet hardly carry the emotions involved in the messages. Sometimes this might even cause misunderstandings and spoil relationships. “If the delivery is not the same, then the message, quite likely, is not the same and if the context in which the message is experienced is altogether different from what it was in Jesus’ time, we may assume that its social and psychological meaning is different, as well” (Postman, 118). Even the avid users of Internet agree that addiction to the social networking sites have reduced their interactions with friends rather than increasing them. The television, Internet and telephone have reduced the frequency of people visiting each other’s place. Before the advent of these technological advancements there were more of interactions, meetings and discussion of views. Printed newspapers and books have lost their significance with people hooked to the internet for latest piece of information and even giving them choices of sorting the news according to their interests. Printed papers and televisions are considered to be slower in this regard. The technology has not just influenced the outside or the social relations of an individual it has also changed the way a person perceives oneself. There is a lot that has changed individuals with the technological advancements. Electronic media has altered the reality of the self and social relations. (Newman, 6-8) The technology is affecting the self-perception of the individuals also. “The individual experiences himself as such, not directly, but only indirectly, from the particular standpoints of other individual members of the social group, or from the generalized standpoint of the social group as a whole to which he belongs.” (Patrick & Cacioppo, 289) A person belonging to a community or network online has an access over the information’s, photographs and other stuff of their friends and other community members. This leads to a development of complex within an individual to ape or follow a lifestyle they think is good. These are complications brought in by the technology. Case Study: To understand how technology is changing self and social relations, we conducted interviews of two individuals, Colin of age 28 and other Ed who is 60. The observations from the interviews of two different individuals, belonging to two different age groups and communities help us to conclude that different individuals use technology for different purposes. Meaning of technology and use of it depends upon the individual however both believe that technology has helped them to make their lives easier and advanced. They can use the technology for their interests and communicating with people around. The younger lot is more addicted to the Internet and uses it for socializing and basically entertainment, however the senior lot uses it for convenience. The use of technology and access of it also depends upon the involvement of the individual with different communities and societies. For instance the older man Ed sometimes reads and writes online blogs on social and political causes, while the younger man does not blog. The younger man uses Internet basically for the purpose of reading mails and meeting up with friends online. The older man pays all his bills online, shops and socializes (very restricted). In our analysis we came to know that the technology has distorted the way the people look at receiving and collecting information. It has made the traditional ways redundant. Both the persons we interviewed agreed that they do not anymore read printed newspapers. They find Internet a better communicator of information. Ed says that it is easier to get the news he wants to read without wasting time on the Internet. While the printed newspapers have a whole lot of information, which he is not very, keen to know. The younger man said that he did not read newspapers in general but due to internet he reads the news sometimes which is available online, while checking his mails. Thus he reads the news only because he can easily access it over the Internet. Thus this is a change in Colin; he is made aware of the happenings around the world with the use Internet and technology. Both the subjects find technology to be very helpful in connecting with friends and staying in touch. None of them can name any technology that they find completely unnecessary, they think that all the technological advancements made till date have done good to our lives. They cannot identify the harm the technology is causing to our lives. Though both the subjects are different from each other and have different uses o technology both agree to the fact that technology can hamper social contacts. The chances of being misunderstood are greater and there are no emotions involved in the conversations involved on the Internet. Colin, who is an avid Internet user and has a huge number of friends online, agrees to an incident where he had been misunderstood over the Internet conversations. Both the subjects agree that the Internet interactions can never take over the personal interactions. For both the subjects community holds different meanings, Colin thinks that community is something which people who common interest participate in, for him a Dorm, a church are communities as they have people participating in the same thing. He agrees to the fact that online communities like the Facebook does not anywhere relate to the identity of the person. People under peer pressure use online communities, even if they are not interested into it. However Ed has a complete different perception about communities, he thinks that community is someplace to which a person belongs and he has no choice about it, like a person residing in a particular area may not like others present there but he has no choice but to be a part of that community. While on the online community he has a choice to interact with people of his choice and likings. He would be part of only those communities, which he thinks, have ideas according to his thought process. This is one advantage, which the technology provides the users with. Ed describes this as “if I don’t feel like continue discussion of any dialog or whatever with that community…I have a choice not to be part of them…that’s online community… but the human community…this is not possible.” Ed thinks that technology has made his life more comfortable and has helped him exercise his choices. It gives him the liberty to decide the people he wants to be with. Though both the subjects disagree with each other on the point of community and technology, both of them agree that that it is impossible to develop true friendships and relations over the virtual world. Personal interactions are required for such relations. They agree to the fact that these virtual world relations do not convert into real friendships. Colin who has “287” online friends agrees on the fact that he cannot trust people who he had met online and had never made good friends over the internet. Both the subjects still feel that if they want to organize an event they would rather prefer calling up people than sending them invites online. Both of them believe that maintaining long distance relationships without the technology would become difficult but still they would take the pain of being in touch with their loved ones through letters in the absence of technology. This point takes us to the fact that technology is not completely necessary for the relationships to flourish. Both the subjects in the attempts of defining technology said that it is a means, which improves our lives but can never replace the personal touch required in the maintenance of the relationships. Conclusion: The technology has a lot of advantages in our daily lives and made our survival easy on this planet. It has developed tools to interact and socialize with people and made the modes of communication within people easier. However the technology is creeping into our lives to take over the space of the personal relations. It has affected the way we socialize and our personal lives. Due to the addiction to technology people are loosing the social relationships. It is taking over the personal space and our world is becoming closer to the virtual world. Through the previous case study we observed that both the young and old people agree that Internet can cause miscommunications among people. Real life friends are very difficult to find on the Internet, that is developing bonds and friendships over the virtual world is not possible. The human touch to relations goes missing in the case of online relationships. The technology has drifted the relationships apart rather than helping in them. People don’t usually take out time to meet up their friends and relatives because they think that it’s convenient for them to be in touch over the phone or the Internet. Though technology is an inseparable part of the human culture now, it is important for one to understand that self and social relations require human touch and should not be neglected. Works Cited 1. Postman, Bagchi. Technopoly : The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Vintage Books, April 1993. 2. Newman, M. David. Sociology: Exploring the architecture of everyday life. California: Pine Forge Press, 2010. 3. Twenge M. Jean. Generation Me. New York : Free Press, 2006. 4. Postman, Neil. Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business. New York: penguin books, 1984. 5. Cooley H. Charles. “The looking - glass self”. In, Charles Horton Cooley, Human nature and the social order. New York: Scribner’s, 1902. pp. 179-185, Available at: http://media.pfeiffer.edu/lridener/courses/LKGLSSLF.HTML (Accessed on June 2, 2010). 6. Patrick W. & Cacioppo T. John. Loniliness: Human nature and the need for social connection. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2008. 7. & 8. Two Interviews: Collin and Ed Read More