Ever since cell phones became more widely used by the millennial generation, many people have pointed to them as the reason people aren’t nearly as social as they once where. While social media connects everyone closer than they have ever been before, why do so many people still feel far a part? Well I for one think its sad that people struggle to have genuine conversations anymore. I for one want to be able to sit in a class 10 minutes before it starts and make a few friends. With people addiction to the cell phone, its becoming harder and harder to do so.
According to the 2015 article done by “Greater Good Magazine” iPhones are killing “face to face interactions” like never before. In the article, MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle says we “lose our ability to have deeper and more spontaneous conversations with others”. Now in 2019, this has become a fundamental problem. Here is an example. Imagine you walk into semi filled doctors office. When you go to sit in the waiting room, are you going to sit right next to someone or will you sit at least one seat away from that person. Chances are you will sit a seat over and immediately look at your phone.
Unfortunately this is the sad reality of the truth. People would rather look at their screens than look at each other. In the end, does it make anybody any happier? I’m not hypocritical here… I use my phone. But I feel that in a world where everyone is interconnected, we should not feel so alone.
How Smartphones Are Killing Conversation:
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_smartphones_are_killing_conversation
Image: https://images.app.goo.gl/4hXKbsugvoQE9T9z6
As I was scrolling through the different posts, this one caught my eye because I agree with the fact that technology today makes it harder for people, especially teens, to communicate face to face. I find myself doing exactly what you wrote, sitting “a seat over” from other people and looking at my phone. I feel as though this is something that I’ve just naturally learned to do over time because I’ve seen other people doing the same. It can be hard to tell if someone minds you sitting next to them and engaging in conversation so instead of asking, it’s easiest for us to just mind our own business and do something else on our phones to pass the time.
I agree with the fact that smart phones are hurting face to face communication, however, they are helping us virtually communicate with others better than ever. You say at the end of your post that “we should not feel so alone” being so interconnected and also ask if having smartphones “make anybody any happier?” which are two statements that I can’t agree with. While smartphones have decreased our ability to communicate in person they have also been able to help us connect with more people than ever before.
I read through a few different articles and opinion pieces, but they all seemed to lean towards one side of the argument. I eventually managed to come across a scholarly article about the impact that smartphone’s have on society, and it addressed different areas and included both positive and negative impacts. As far as social impacts it states that smart phones have made it possible “for us to remain connected with our friends and family all the time” and that “constant communication” can help keep families and kids stay safe. We can’t always be with our friends and family but through our smartphones we can talk to them, send them messages, and make sure that everything is okay. And it doesn’t just have to be people you already know that you can communicate with, there’s plenty of safe places online to talk to and meet others who may share common interests and ideas as you. The article also states that “social networking may build social bonds” and that the knowledge you gain from using a phone in a smart way can “make the user a better communicator as well.”
Overall, I believe that along with the advancement of phones comes more good than harm. If you really think about it we are able to communicate with each other better than ever before.
Source: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2c28/0b6a690442a97a571e09b2404e2d21720db4.pdf
Sources to my comment on “Are cell phones playing a factor is people’s communication skills?”:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/apologies-freud/201304/is-technology-ruining-our-lives
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33976695
Cell phones are without a doubt killing the social skills that are generation truly never even had. I also agree with you that I would love to be able to sit in a classroom before the class begins and make new friends. However, this is 100% a lost concept for our generation and I truly do not think it is some thing that we will ever be able to do as a young society.
What about the other issues that cell phones have posed within out generation though? Has there been more problems created than just those regarding social interactions? Personally, I think one of the biggest problems cellphones/technology has created within our generation is a lack of personal down time. There is absolutely no balance between work life, personal life, and social life with the convenience and accessibility of technology in today’s world. An article from Psychology Today says, “It’s easy to blame social media outlets, those splashy internet newcomers, for the upending of our privacy.” And the truth of the matter is that we all do place the blame on technology itself for being the root of having no personal privacy or downtime. Why can’t we just put our phones and our iPads away when we get home? The answer to that question is that we physically cannot. We are addicted to the convenience and accessibility of our technology. An article from BBC states, “It’s the accessibility, the sensory experience of swiping that screen, the instant gratification… there is something quite pleasurable about that… our generation hasn’t got the hang of how to respond to it so we respond very reactively.” Which brings me back to the question of what issues has technology/cell phones imposed. And yet another answer to that question is a personal addiction to the technology itself that we all have. It is because of this addiction that spirals into other problems, like the lack of social skills, privacy, and personal downtime.
Sihan Liu on September 1, 2019 at 4:02 pm said:
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The innovation of cell phone definitely made communications easier, people now can send messages to others in seconds as long as the internet or signal is covered. People no longer need to wait for several weeks or even several months to pass information to each other, there are no more risks of losing letters on the tracking way like they were before.
The shortcoming, however, is also very obvious. Shalini Misra, a psychology professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, claims that the presence of a phone more negatively affected conversations held between good friends, more so than in conversations held between two strangers. She started a test for 200 coffee shop attendees, gave them different topics and collected the survey of whether pulling out phones can really affect the quality of their conversations. The results show that when someone in the conversation pulls out a phone, the others in the conversation will feel less connected to the conversation.
I strongly agree with your idea that people shouldn’t lose their ability to communicating face to face because of the development of technologies. I found this problem is very common in our real life. My friends and I are Youtube lovers, sometimes we will just eat our own food and stare the screens with few little communications when we have lunch or dinner together. After I read these articles, I feel that people should have more face to face connections rather than simply the plain black and white letters texts online.
Source:
https://www.androidauthority.com/smartphones-make-communication-easier-not-better-654878/
The innovation of cell phone definitely made communications easier, people now can send messages to others in seconds as long as the internet or signal is covered. People no longer need to wait for several weeks or even several months to pass information to each other, there are no more risks of losing letters on the tracking way like they were before.
The shortcoming, however, is also very obvious. Shalini Misra, a psychology professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, claims that the presence of a phone more negatively affected conversations held between good friends, more so than in conversations held between two strangers. She started a test for 200 coffee shop attendees, gave them different topics and collected the survey of whether pulling out phones can really affect the quality of their conversations. The results show that when someone in the conversation pulls out a phone, the others in the conversation will feel less connected to the conversation.
I strongly agree with your idea that people shouldn’t lose their ability to communicating face to face because of the development of technologies. I found this problem is very common in our real life. My friends and I are Youtube lovers, sometimes we will just eat our own food and stare the screens with few little communications when we have lunch or dinner together. After I read these articles, I feel that people should have more face to face connections rather than simply the plain black and white letters texts online.
I agree with the idea that cell phones are making face to face social interaction harder and less frequent but, if you look at the flip side of the argument, cell phones and the internet are actually connecting people and allowing for more interaction than ever before. According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of people who use the internet for social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. use it to catch up with old friends or keep in touch with family.The internet has made it possible for people to connect with anyone anywhere instantaneously, which I think is a great thing. Especially being a college student away from home, I appreciate social media because it allows me to keep in touch with all my relatives and friends from home and share with them my life and getting to see what’s going on in their’s as well.
For many smartphone users the typical social interaction rules have changed, and many are now doing what was once face to face, over the internet. In this day and age of rapid technological change and growth, social interaction is all done online. So while it may not be visible in a room full of people glued to their phones, social interaction definitely still exists.
Source: https://www.pewinternet.org/2011/11/15/why-americans-use-social-media/
The world is always looking for ways to “progress” in terms of technology. There is rarely a lull between the release of a new technology, and an announcement stating that new developments and updates are in the works. However, does anyone ever step back and think about the unintended consequences that may arise from technologies we invent out of convenience? The slow but inevitable loss of communication skills may be one of the largest consequences, though perhaps also one of the most ignored. Sure, we all talk about it. We all acknowledge it. But what is anyone doing to prevent it?
Even as a 21 year old, I’m finding it more and more difficult to have “deep” conversations with other people around my age. We, the generation raised on social media, have almost entirely lost the ability to think deeper than the surface. Simply put, we’re shallow. Yet I know we’re all looking for connections that we’ll never find through the constant use of technology and social media, despite how “connected” it may make us.
You’re last comment about how we should not feel so alone in a world that is as interconnected as ours hits it right on the head. On top of losing communication skills, cell phones and social media are causing an increase in depression. According to several studies, it was shown that teens and young adults who frequently use social media had a much higher rate of reported depression than those who avoid it (13% to 66%). While this simply be correlation without causation, it cannot be ignored that these studies, as well as many others, show that depression is rising as cell phone use is rising. The studies show it much too often for it to be only a correlation.
We are spending so much more time “connecting” with people through social media and so much less time connecting in person. This rise in depression could be because these online connections are less emotionally satisfying. Despite having the ability to talk to almost anyone we want, we still feel isolated and alone. There is no real empathetic, emotional connected when you have a conversation through a screen.
Sources:
https://childmind.org/article/is-social-media-use-causing-depression/
I agree with wanting to strike up conversation with others before classes but it seems to have become abnormal to do so. Most people, including myself, turn to their device as a way to get themselves out of doing things: one being talking to new people. We rather hide in our phones to avoid new and awkward encounters. Because this has become the new norm, we are starting to separate ourselves from society. This translates to no longer knowing how to talk to each other in person. We are detaching from human connection when we should really be detaching from our phones.
A survey noted that “93 percent of millennials use their phone in bed, 80 percent use them in the restroom, and 43 percent use them while stopped at a red light”.
This statement brings phone addiction to a much larger level. Before, it was suggested that we use our devices in order to get out of communication with others face-to-face. But now, it is apparent that we have become so addicted to technology that we are turning to our phone in our solitude, as well. It is normal to fill boredom with random scrolls through Instagram, however, using your phone in the bathroom and at a red light is simply unnecessary. People will even go as far as to text while they are driving. This addiction has gotten out of control and is isolating us in our own worlds. One where we don’t look up from our phones and ignore relationships that are right in front of us.
Reference:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/are-smartphones-really-killing-the-art-of-conversation/
Reading this article was a some what of an eye opener to me. I know that my generation has grown rapidly with the amount of phone usage through the years, but I did not realize what differences it can just make in the classroom. The first thing I do when I arrive at class is go on my phone! This article states, ” I for one want to be able to sit in a class 10 minutes before it starts and make a few friends.” which I think is honestly a really great idea. I always thought of a phone as a social tool but in reality it seems like its ending up at more of a sheltering tool. It helps people avoid talking with others.
According to Green Garage ” us are even obsessed with checking our Facebook accounts, uploading images on Instagram and tweeting about what a good time we are having, instead of actually having a good time.” meaning that people are more in tune with their phones then they are in their real life. Speaking from personal experience, I do notice that when I am with my friends, sometimes disappear into their phones which drives me crazy. This article proves that people do need to relax with the amount of phone usage per day. If everyone puts down their phones more, the more social and fun this world would be!
article link: https://greengarageblog.org/18-essential-pros-and-cons-of-cell-phones
I agree with the fact that the increase in technology used by teens and adults have squashed much of face to face interaction. In an article I read called, “Does Cell Phone Really Affect Our Communication Skills?”, it explains how technology such as social media and texting has caused many teens to pay less attention to their school work and more attention to their cell phones. Once they get a notification or text message, they will automatically turn to their phone to see who it is. It affects grades and focus towards their school work which ultimately does more harm than good.
However, the article also mentions many positive sizes to the rising of technology throughout the past years. Texting has made it easier for adults and teenagers to communicate with one another as opposed to calling or waiting to see someone in person. Cell phones are also extremely useful when it comes to finding out information very quickly. The article states that statistics have shown in 2012, 51% of cell phone users use their cell phone to get information. By now, I am sure there is an increase in the percentage because cell phones have become a huge part of our lives. As a full time college student, I think cell phones do more harm than good. My cellphone is my main source of communication with friends, families, and professors. Living more than three hours away from home, I think it is necessary to have a cellphone with me at all times incase of emergencies or just to get in contact with friends and families for any reason. So although cellphones do negatively impact our lives, it has also made a huge difference in many people’s lives by allowing easy access to information as well as being able to contact people in a fast way.
Reference: “Does cell phone use really affect our communication skills?”
https://lhslance.org/2013/features/cell-phone-use-really-affect-communication-skills/