Technology has many positives effects and is convenient in many ways.
It connects people with friends and family who live far away, provides a retreat from the constant noise of the outside world and helps college students finish homework.
Unfortunately, it is also quite negative in many ways as well. For instance, it affects the thinking process of people and the emotions like we examined in the past two issues of the Northwestern News.
In this the conclusion of our three week look of the negative effects of technology, we will look at how the continued use of technology, whether it be listening to music or texting friends and family from far off lands, is actually isolating people instead connecting them.
As a person walks across our Northwestern campus they can’t help but notice a fellow student with their face buried in their cell phone or wearing headphones listening to music.
Why does that person do that? Is the text message or social media post so important that they need to not look at the beautiful world or acknowledge the people around them? Is the music so great that they need to block out the people around them and not engage in a conversation with them?
According to Sherry Turkle in her book, “Alone Together,” she said, “technology promises to let us do anything from anywhere with anyone. But it also drains us as we try to do everything everywhere. We begin to feel overwhelmed and depleted by the lives technology makes possible. We may be free to work from anywhere, but we are also prone to being lonely everywhere.”
She added, “In a surprising twist, relentless connection leads to a new solitude. We turn to new technology to fill the void, but as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down.”
That isolation couldn’t be any clearer on the campus today. The people with their face buried in their phones or have headphones on are separating themselves from the accompaniment of others around them, and turning to technology to satisfy their needs.
They convince themselves that they don’t need people to be truly happy, or that the people they currently stay in touch with via social media or text messaging, are the only friends that they need.
The people that wear headphones tune out the outside noise because they believe that’s all it is –noise– where in reality the outside noise that they block out is the actual music of the world and the sounds they are hearing in their headphones is the real noise.
That type of false thinking by people that use technology obsessively is what ultimately causes the isolation among individuals.
Instead of connecting more people together, technology actually leads to people distancing themselves from the others around them.
In an attempt to fix the isolation caused from the use of technology, perhaps the person that spends an excessive amount of time on their phone or listening to music should try to go without, or limit, the usage of their phone or headphones for a day, or even a week and practice engaging in real conversations with the people around them, or listen to sounds around them.
Who knows, they might even find that a phone or headphones are not needed to be truly happy.