How Internet Has Affected Social Media and Connections

Technology has been a large part of American culture for the last 200 years and continues to grow more each year. This has made a large impact on our everyday lives and how we interact with one another. The U.S. alone sends over 6 billion texts each day! (Textrequest). This takes away quality time engaging with friends and family. Phones and other devices have taken over our way of communicating, thus affecting our relationships with others.

Technology has helped connect people and created friendships that without technology couldn’t happen. A big way for people to connect with each other is by using social media like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. Facebook connects more of us to more of our friends and family than we have ever been connected before (Document 2). Every "Like, every Share, every comment is a way for us to renew on a tiny scale our connections with our friends (Document 2). Our phones are devices that can connect us to anyone around the world in the matter of seconds (Document 5). Technology is not only connecting us with other people it is also connecting us to more information.

Nowadays, the communications with others are different from the traditional ways and normal rules. People take advantage of new technology to communicate instead of face to face. Although the email and text message make people easy to communicate, the society

The internet has changed the world as we knew it. The world no longer communicates, does business, or perches commodities in the same a traditional way. E-mail, instant massager and chat rooms were the first innovations to be used by the public. As time went on more and more people depended on the internet to communicate with each other. It did not take long for the U.S. Postal service to see the decline in mailed letters. With the internet being so easy to access and email being so easy to use it quickly became the preferred way to communicate with family and friends over long distances. Companies soon followed suit to better serve their clients.

“No Need to Call” by Sherry Turkle is an article written about the relationship people have with technology, and specifically with communicating via technology. How it has affected the way we want to interact with people, or how we end up interacting with people. This being due to social norms having changed when it comes to our way of interacting, such as the meaning behind making phone calls rather than texting. The article itself brings up many viewpoints as well as different opinions on the subject, plus a few pros and cons to show that certain things are not always to be seen as black and white. Technology has its advantages, but even the most tech savvy, devoted people have to admit that it has its disadvantages, brought up in this article. Examples are brought up with each point to

In her essay “No Need to Call,” Sherry Turkle makes the claim that smart phones, texting in particular, are having a negative effect on the way humans interact and communicate with each other. The issue of how smart phones are changing our social behaviors is important because it can potentially impact the future of the human race. With smart phones, computers and tablets, our society is entering into uncharted territory and we cannot be certain of how the outcome will change our social interactions. Figuring out whether or not these changes are negative or positive is a pertinent topic for all people because everyone is affected by these new technologies in their everyday lives, whether they have them or not. Turkle believes that the way we are communicating through these devices is starting to develop us into humans who are too reliant on impersonal forms of communication to the point that it is changing how we interact with others.

In the late 20th century, technology began advancing so quickly that entire world economies underwent extraordinary transformations in very little time. It used to be only a handful of powerful people and corporations interacting in global trade and commerce, but technology has made it so “countries like India are now able to compete for global knowledge,” giving leaders and companies the ability to work with more nations than ever before (Friedman 7). The internet has given men and women the power to connect, communicate and provide information to people across the planet in an instant. It has given people the opportunity to seek knowledge, educate themselves and single-handily play a role in the world economy. This is called

The ease with which people are able to share and communicate over the Internet has had the effect that people no longer feel the need to interact in with one another in person because they feel that everything they want to do can be done over the Internet. An example can be seen in “Connectivity and its Discontents”, where we are introduced to Randy (Turkle 621). Randy’s younger sister was recently engaged to be married, something that most people would consider a significant event. She and her fiance decided to make the announcement to their family and friends via e-mail, something that made Randy feel very far away from his sister emotionally. Social media can also have the effect that constantly updating our information and giving second by second updates on the ordinary events of our daily

Throughout the years people have been given the privilege of interpersonal communication in many forms, such as letters, emails, texts, and social media. Letters were one of the very first mediums people used to communicate, and as the years went by technology improved, and emails were created. Emails served as a faster alternative for people in a business to contact someone else. Following that was the idea of text messaging, not only was it time efficient but also easier. That wasn’t the only thing connecting people all around the world though. Social media wasn’t the most popular to begin with, but as time went by, and it became more personal, people began to take a very big interest in it. Letters, emails, texts, and social media play

In addition, big corporations have power to control our digital experience and foster conformity. The ideas that circulate the internet can foster a negative notion of self-esteem and image. At the end of the day, we have to realize that technology has some of its benefits but it also adheres ramifications. We have to be wary of the benefits and the harmful effects that play in our life. We also have to be aware of the effect that technology has on others, such as having a phone out during a conversation aiding ill-mannerism. Technology connects us in many ways but it also distances us. It creates dissonance when we are having a face-to-face interactions and the other person is distracted because of their phone. Superficially, we know a lot about one another through social media but we actually don't know the in depth story. There are many bad information out there and that sometimes messes with our sense of judgement. Through the many facets of social media, we express ourselves differently in variety of platforms. This can affect the sense of self and the real identity of yourself. The web can be a chaotic place with masses of information but with that comes the responsibility of finding the right information and reaping the

Every year technology becomes more complex and unforgiving. If one was to post something on social media, it is forever on the internet. Many people post things that they later regret. Words hurt people’s feelings and it can cause disputes, stereotypes, racism, and other negative feelings and behaviors toward individuals. With the use of cell phones people are becoming more used to the idea of communication using devices, therefore missing out on all the positive aspects personal communication

Interacting with other people can difficult and at times even unpleasant, but at the end of the day it is a task everyone has to overcome, or not. In Alone Together Turtkle writes of how we have come to readily accept a more technological based world saying, “ Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities” (263 Turkle). Today technology allows its users to communicate with others without ever having to see their face via text or email, meeting the vulnerability of being awkward and boring during a conversation in real life. Yet, avoiding actual interaction with people diminishes a persons social intelligence, making a conversing with others all the more difficult as they can no longer rely on the controlled atmosphere of messaging system and have to deal with unexpected questions and topics. Moreover, in the same article Turtle discuses the younger generation aversion to human interaction, she write, “ Teenagers avoid making telephone calls, fearful that they ‘reveal too much’. They would rather text than talk”( Turtle 272). Technology provides a controlled environment in which one decides to what degree he or she would like to interact with other, but this is not how the real world works. One can text answers for a job interview or email the news of a sick relative, somethings have to be done in person. Accordingly, in Tough’s article social intelligence is defined as, “ the ability to recognize interpersonal dynamics and adapt quickly to different social situations”( Tough 2). Online users do not exhibit social intelligence, the online domain is posses no new social situations to adapt to, is something makes one uncomfortable or annoyed they can simply “x” out of a window or go to another website. Increased reliance on technology will hinder the development of character, especially social

Technology is one main reason why people have disengaged from social life and become more isolated. People have learned that they do not need to actually talk to someone physically to make a new friend. This is a problem because the idea of going up to someone and starting a conversation will slowly become unknown. This will consequence in the extinction of the traditional human interaction people used to have. Turkle believes that when people use “the advantage of screen communication,” and technology to reach out to others, there is a downgrade in the quality of the relationship (Turkle 374). There is no certainty in knowing if someone is being genuine or if they are even who they say they are online. People have learned to use technology

Innovations such as FaceBook and MySpace combine images, text, and messaging to create new possibilities for social interaction. Websites such as YouTube combine broadcast media with the self-directed properties of the internet. SMS texting has revolutionised the social lives of many people. All these media allow people to sustain relationships across time and space in ways that have never before been possible. Some are concerned however, that over-reliance on such forms of communication reduces the importance of face-to-face social experience. Others argue that such media present new ways of defining our identities and establishing new kinds of social interaction (Castells, 2000).

One can argue that social media lets us connect to one another. Yes, this is true to some extent but social media can also be the source of people driving each other away. When we are so busy having our noses in our phone constantly we miss everything that goes on around us. We lose a sense of communication when falling into this temptation of always having to know to what is happening on our phone. Thomas Freidman stated that he feels technology is dividing us instead of uniting us after experiencing a taxi ride gone wrong in the sense of the driver constantly chatting on his phone. After Apple introduced the iPod it seems the world has slowly drifted to a state silence. In Steve Johnson’s essay Social Connections, he tells of the time before