Technology: Friend or Foe?

...

Even though our ability to connect using technology is readily available in our daily lives, we have a hard time taking a break from it to just sit with ourselves. in “The Flight From Conversation,” Turkle echoes that same idea saying “..In our rush to connect, we flee from solitude, our ability to be separate and gather ourselves.” Indeed, why is it that we feel we have to constantly be connected and are not comfortable just finding the joy in simple solitude in our daily lives? Take the case of accidentally leaving your cell phone at home. I have done this on several occasions, and have literally gone thirty minutes out of my way to go home and get it, even though it meant being late for work. I didn’t need my cell phone, but the fear of ‘missing out’ and basically my addiction to technology was instrumental in me making the choice to accept the consequences necessary for me to retrieve my device. When I go it back into my possession, no one had died, and I had ‘missed’ nothing. This forced me to examine the impact I let technology have on my life and also helped influence my decision to delete social media.

In conclusion, I find all of these reasons equally important in raising awareness surrounding the issue of technology replacing natural, human interaction. It seems to me that the art of having a casual, face to face conversation has suffered greatly. I can’t help but imagine what would happen if we continued down the slippery slope of becoming so dependent on technology. As a result of the ever growing advances in industrial science, I wonder if technology will eventually cause us to become more like robots and less like humans.

Works Cited

Anderson, Janna Quitney. “Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Techonological Age.” Newspaper Research Journal 26.2/3 (Spring 2005): 135-136. Web.

Dittmar, H., & Howard, S. “Thin-Ideal Internalization and Social Comparison Tendency As Moderators of Media Model’s Impact On Women’s Body-Focused Anxiety.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 23.6 (December 2004): 768-791. Web.