Technology: Negatively Affecting Growth And Preventing Social Skills

Technology has also made it to the point where people are losing social skills and no longer interacting face to face. It has become common for people to have a more active virtual social life than they do a physical social life. “When the brain spends more time on technology-related tasks and less time exposed to other people, it drifts away from fundamental social skills like reading facial expressions during conversation” (“Scientists Fear”, 2008). Technology has come to a point where people no longer have to or want to leave their homes in order to meet and socialize with other people. With such things as social networking, we are allowed to meet hundreds of new people without even moving. The problem with that is we need to have the opportunity to leave our homes and engage in social interactions face to face. Social skills are important for a healthy social life. “Social skills are the skills we use to communicate and interact with each other, both verbally and non-verbally, through gestures,

Having so much technology can cause us to lose face to face social skills, impacting social and emotional development in our

The Impact of Technology on Human Interaction Picture this: you are walking into a busy coffee shop, filled with the buzz of conversation and the scent of freshly brewed coffee. Everyone seems to be connected, but they are lost in their phones and laptops. But beneath the surface, there's a feeling of disconnection because people are not interacting or talking as much as people would be for the age of the iPhone. Sherry Turkle talks about this lack of belonging in her essay, “Connectivity and Its Discontents,” by looking at how our constant use of communicative technologies can actually make us feel more disconnected from others. She shows us how our use of technology might actually be making us feel more alone.

First and foremost, a lack of social skills is a very significant downer of technology. People get so used to talking to people on games, on the phone, or email, that they don't know how to communicate in person. One time my friend, who plays video games a lot, was gonna ask this girl out, but he didn't know how to talk to girls in person. His lack of social skills ruined his chances of getting a girlfriend. If he got out and communicated with people and not always behind a screen or on the other end of the phone, he would most likely be better with his social skills.Technology is continuing to hurt social skills, it causes obesity, and it ruins work ethic.

Unfortunately, too many parents have their faces focused down at their cell phone screen; their children are receiving an unspoken message that they are not important. As a result, lack of face-to-face communication keeps people from being social and spending quality time with one another. Instead of dialogue with their parents, children today are head down, submerged in their electronics. In fact, during dinner time, families used to come together to reconnect after a long day apart, but now with cell phones the closeness once shared has drastically changed. "People who spend a lot of time online don't develop social and emotional skills they need," said Clifford Nass, a Stanford communication professor and a researcher on both studies. "We think the reason is that you have to learn how to read emotion and understand people's emotions." For example, at the playground, while parents are on their cell phone they think they are spending time with their children when they are not. Moreover, when children get together, they do not play the same anymore because they are too busy playing games on their phones. Later on, because of no real socializing, children become expressionless and have a difficult time with emotional and physical interaction with others.

This negative effect that I’m referring to is with our social skills, or as I’d like to call them our human factor. While the advancement of technology has no doubt increased our technical skill sets, it has come at the expenses of our societies social skill sets. Technology is creating an autonomous society, where we are seeing less and less actual face to face interaction. Many individuals, if asked, prefer to text someone rather than talk to someone. Many children today prefer to play online with friends rather than actually playing together in the physical sense. I find these alarming facts to exist with my own children, even with my constant attempts at countering societies

On an article titled 5 Ways Technology Has Negatively Affected Families, author Kim Williamson calls it “A Less Empathetic Generation” (2012). As we all know, traditional families were expected to be polite and speak to each other to build relationships and connection whether they liked it or not. This skill is imperative even in reality today as we grow up and build networks. However, technology has given people the opportunity to hide in their virtual worlds and has create a comfortable atmosphere there. People today lack the ability to “get enough interpersonal face-to-face interaction needed to develop social skills” (Williamson, 2012). As much as intro or extroverts would enjoy their virtual presence, face-to-face interaction is still an important skill to master in the society we live in today. People are judged by what they can accomplish in real life, not behind closed doors and technology has put that at risk for

Author Ray Bradbury writes in “The Pedestrian”, “In ten years of walking … he had never met another person walking, not once in all that time,” There is a possibility of people not going out because they will be on their electronic devices. Technology can affect people in social interactions to the point where most people who are on their devices most of the time are having problems socializing with others. Larry Rosen claims in the article “Connecting Virtually Isn't Like Real-World Bonding”, “The total effect has been to allow us to connect more with the people in our virtual world – but communicate less with those who are in our real world.” The result of being able to access technology easier and communicate through devices has created a large amount of people to socialize less out in the real world. The outcome of the advancements of technology, displays by the groups of people who have issues, socializing by being on their electronic devices for long periods of

In the CNN article, Go offline for National day of Unplugging, supports my claim “electronics devices has grown in recent years as it's become increasingly difficult to step away on activities from the online world” (Kelly). One day technology might become everyone downfall of what the real world use to be, remember as child to make a friend all you have to do is bat a smile and introduce yourself in a calm and righteous way then everything would usually fall in place and that’s when interpersonal skills would come play the yes-or no game how to make and keep a friend for a lifetime (until high-school appears), but now children have skip the steps and head-clash for social media at an early age to develop a friendships. It becomes a stigma to witness how common functions are being

Isolation, lack of social skills, obesity, depressions, increased bullying and lack of modesty covers some negative effects of technology in society but on the other hand it also have many useful returns as well. Being

Not only teenagers and middle-aged adults, but even young children are addicted to staring down at a blue screen. How many times during the past year have you walked by a playground and heard the contagious laughter of young children playing? I bet that this number is very small. When I was nine years old, I remember what my favorite thing to do after school was. It was to play. Similar to every other child at the time, running around an open field or zipping down a slide was all I wanted. But today, the hushed silence I experience as I walk past the devoid park gives me chills as I watch the swings and slides wait to give joy to laughing children that used to frolic here everyday, but now remain quiet in their secluded houses. Not because it’s cold outside, but because nine-year-olds today are copying our technological obsession. Did you know that on average, children get their first cellphones at age eight? Our generation is becoming the most antisocial generation yet. Although many people disagree and believe that using technology, especially cell phones, make them more social, I don’t understand how sitting at home on a Friday night, texting or blogging, is more social than hanging out with your friends and enjoying the company of others. Although numerous people disagree with me, stating that technology is making people more social, I remain committed to my belief. For people who

Technology has progressed in so many ways over the past decades. As technology has progressed over the years our interactions and our human connection with one another has decreased drastically. We are more on our phones and devices we are missing out on getting to know someone new or just building a connection. As a kid we had phones but we did not rely on as this generation does. If we wanted to get in touch with our friends we would just knock on their door. We were always outsiders and loved to play outside and get to know our neighbors. We interacted all the time and got to know almost everyone in our neighborhood. I miss those days because kids seemed freer and less attached to their phones. I see parents getting kids electronics at such

“See, technology Has made us more selfish and separate than ever Cause while it claims to connect us, connection has gotten no better.”Technology has taken connection away from us because all we do is look down at that tiny little screen and don’t communicate with others around us. “heavy media users that consume more than 16 hours of media per day are more likely to get in trouble a lot, and are often sad or unhappy….”(rideout). Heavy media users are highly likely to be unhappy and people who are unhappy have a less chance of being social and connecting with other people.“Screen-based activities can take upward of 11 hours of a teenager’s day, and many demand rapid shifts of attention: quick camera cuts in videos, frenetically paced games, answering questions in multiple apps, not to mention web design that invites skimming.”(Willingham). With access to all of these thing and not being able to pay attention is a major part in why we are not connecting because you have to pay attention to a person when they

Supporting the theory that technology impairs social development skills, in Goodall’s podcast he insists, “parents need to really get involved in with the kids” (Goodall “Is Technology Really Hurting Kids ' Ability to Socialize?”). Although Dr. Bernard Robin warns that it is still too early to tell if the technology is a detriment or a benefit to social development, he compares the arguments for and against technology, and says, “Kids who are socially adept and have a lot of friends will use technology to increase that number even further.” Dr Robin continues, “Versus the other side of the coin which talks about using social media for

“Little by little, Internet and mobile technology seems to be subtly destroying the meaningfulness of interactions we have with others, disconnecting us from the world around us, and leading to an imminent sense of isolation in today’s society.” (Melissa Nilles “Technology is Destroying the Quality of Human Interaction”) Because of technology, the interactions with other people have no meaning, and that we are no longer in touch with the world that we live in. Since technology makes it easier to connect and converse with friends, family, etc. it gives people the opportunity to avoid face to face interaction at all, which leads to isolation and loneliness. This is because as human beings, physical touch is something that we