The effects of technology on memory
and the brain are scientifically proven.
We can all come up with examples of things we could remember more easily
before we had smart phones, and we all can attest to the ever increasing amount
of screen time we rely on in our daily lives.
But the effects on the attitude and everyday actions of people are less
clear cut.
Technology has had a very definite and
negative effect on the majority of my relationships. Some might argue that texting, instant
messaging, and social media have brought people together by increasing the
amount of communication one can have with others and the amount of people one can
communicate with at a time, and they would be correct. However, it’s important to note the quality
of those communications and the relationships that develop through them.
My family is probably the easiest
area of my daily life for me to observe such negative impacts. When I have the ability to communicate with
friends over texts or facebook, it seems to make it unnecessary for me to
actually talk to my family at home. I’ve
often found myself pretending to listen to my mom’s work stories, and even laughing
or offering encouragement, without actually having any idea what she’s said
because I’m too engrossed in discreetly making a face to send in a five second snap
chat. And even without the communication
with my friends, technology provides the perfect way out of talking to my
family. A book can’t be read easily over
dinner, but a family TV show can certainly take the place of a meaningful dinner
conversation.
It goes even farther than that
though. The ability to communicate
without actually hearing or seeing my parents detracts from my connection to
them. I now can have an entire
conversation with my dad over text without any greeting, without my asking him
about his day, and without any conclusion.
I don’t know if this is a direct side effect of the cell phone or if I
just changed in that way as I grew older, but what I do know is before I had a
cell phone I would tell my dad I love him at the end of every conversation.
I see
these affects with outside of my family as well. Maybe I have more friends now than I would if
I couldn’t talk to them easily outside of school, but that doesn’t mean I’m any
closer to them than I would be. Sometimes,
it’s because it’s just easier to talk to people without seeing them. I definitely went through a stage in middle
school where I only talked to girls over facebook message, even if I saw them every
day. I can't count the number of times I've needlessly ended a conversation and told the other person I'd just text him or her later. Even today, there are people I talk
to more over text than in school, and it's something I've been working very hard to change.
I
recently started trying to redefine several of my relationships. It started when one of my closest friends
confided in me that he wanted to go off grid, so that he could only talk to
people in person. Since then, I’ve been especially
wary of any relationship that relies too heavily on technology, and there are
many people whom I’ve annoyed by telling them there are things I will only talk
to them about in person. This isn’t the result of some
strange paranoia I have about people seeing my texts, as they might
think, but rather a part of the epiphany I had early this year that if there is
something truly worth talking about, a text won’t do it justice.
If you have time and are interested, here is an interesting interview with psychiatrist Donna Maragani (possibly completely misspelled) about how effects of technology on relationships: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb0EVoOYFWE
