Technology has played a major role in shaping today’s society. One way technology has impacted society is through the use of social media and cyberspace. Social media is one way to connect all different people from all different places. Social media creates a social networks that connects all different people. For example, I use Facebook to connect with my family and friends who do not live close to me anymore. Facebook gives me the opportunity to still be in contact with those I am not with physically, this creates the sense of the absence of departure. Instagram is another example of how I connect with people, I get to see the life of different people through my phone. However, there are negatives to using social media and the internet. A lot of people in today’s society has become attached to using social media. You can look around with a large group of people and it’s most likely that a lot of them are interacting with their phones or social media. This creates a form of alienation and fragmentation. I have also found myself in this situation. I have caught myself several times using my phone when I’m with friends or family. Instead of using my phone, I should be living in the moment and talking to the people I am with. Using my phone and social media has but me in situations where I alienate myself from the people around me.

Social media has changed society as a whole. Social media and cyberspace brings social networking to a whole new level. Technology and social media have become part of so many people’s lives due to their advantages. I can relate to this statement because I use social media and technology a lot to benefit me. One example of this would be the use of my iphone. I use my iphone to call and text my family members and friends who are far away from me. Being at college makes me miss them and I like to keep in touch with them. My iphone makes it easy for me to instantly text my family or friends right there in the moment. I also like to use Facebook a lot. I like to use Facebook because I can send people messages who are very far away at anytime. For example, my stepmom goes to Portugal a lot and I like to message her through Facebook because my message will easily be sent to her and she can easily respond. I also like to use Snapchat because I can communicate with my friends quickly using photos. This involves the idea of sending a message to a person through time and space and having the other person receive the message in an instant. According to the book Technically Together by Michele A. Willson it states, “Online communities come in very different shapes and sizes, ranging from virtual communities that connect geographically distant people” (Willson 62).

Technologies have become a major aspect of many peoples lives. Our society has found different ways to incorporate technologies into our everyday routines. One way we incorporate technology into our everyday routine is when we first wake up. Most likely, everyone wakes up in the morning and checks their phone. We like to check our phones to see what we have received while we were sleeping. Tristan Harris performed a Ted Talk and quoted, “Every time I check my phone, I’m playing the slot machine to see, what am I going to get? What am I going to get? Every time I check my email, I’m playing the slot machine, saying, “What am I going to get?” Tristan is explaining a routine that most people do everyday as well. We check our phones on a daily to see what we will get. This has impacted our routine by constantly distracting us from the world around us. This is just one minor routine, another routine that has been changed is transportation. Transportation is a major aspect of technological advancements. The automobile made it easier for people to travel long distances and live in further locations. This invention of the automobile impacted the lives of millions by providing a source of transportation that can get  person to a location is a shorter amount of time. Personally when I was home, I used my car all the time. Driving everywhere has became a routine in my everyday life by providing me with a source of transportation that can get me place to place easily.

Having knowledge and information does increase the potential for control. Knowing how to obtain power and having the information to accomplish this goal can be very beneficial in the process of gaining power. In today’s society a lot of information and knowledge through the internet. Using reliable sources, a person can expand their knowledge tremendously by applying the information they learned from the internet to their previous knowledge. However, finding too much knowledge or too much information on the internet can create conflict with trying to obtain information. According to the book Technically Together by Michele A. Willson it states, “…information overload is an automatic result of entering cyberspace; the world of information is the world of too much information” (Willson 78). To relate this to myself, I can say that I have ran into many problems with trying to find information for a research paper and having way too many sources to choose from to gather information from. The process of going through all the sources and trying to find the right information can be a very tedious and stressful process.

Technology has influenced the possibility of twenty- four- hour communication by providing different access to communication. Just using an iphone you can text someone, call someone, email someone, and even facetime someone just using your cellular device. There are good and bad sides to this. This is good because it gives people the chance to communicate with anyone at anytime no matter how far apart these people are apart from each other. This gives people access to communicate with each other in any situation in an event of communication being needed. A bad side to this would have to be with alienation. Having the ability to communicate with anyone at anytime gives anyone the opportunity to separate themselves from the people they are with in person. For example, if someone is at a family gathering they can call or facetime a friend and not talk to their family members at the gathering. This can be good because it provides easy effective communication with anyone but can be bad when alienation occurs.

Works Cited (MLA)
Willson, Michele A. Technically Together: Re-thinking Community within Techno-society. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. Print.