Impact of Technology on Human Relationships Essay Sample

The third and fourth industrial revolutions taking place over the past half-century have brought people countless new technologies. This advancement in technology is said to have made people's lives better, especially social relationships. However, this has sparked a heated debate. On their own, these developments must have made people's social lives more developed but have detrimental effects on relationships.

It is undeniable that technology is making people more social for many reasons, one of the driving forces to promote this is the emergence and development of social networking platforms. First, technology has made people develop their old relationships. If in the past, for two people who knew each other to be able to contact each other when they were far away from each other, they would have to send each other letters and wait a very long time for those letters to reach the recipients. Even in wartime, those letters may never even reach the people who need to receive them, the sender has died. However, thanks to the advent of mobile devices such as phones and messaging apps, that connections are made faster and more convenient. Besides, some people may lose contact with each other for a while but can still connect thanks to information technology. The second point to explain this is that technology has made people expand their circle of relationships. Sites like Facebook, or formerly Myspace, Yahoo, have a "Group" feature, allowing users with similar views and interests in a certain field to make friends and talk to each other. Through that, they can get close to each other. There have been many friendships created from cyberspace that have become extremely cohesive and close. These things have partly proved that technology is connecting people.

On the other hand, if you think about it carefully, it is the technology that brings people together that is pushing people apart. These days, when two people meet, instead of spending time talking to each other, they are more likely to stay on their phones and focus on texting. The two people who seem to be the closest to each other are the farthest away because of the appearance of such modern tools. In addition, many people are so absorbed in mobile devices such as computers, phones, they are ready to spend all day, without eating, without sleeping to surfing the web, playing games, and watching movies. This leads to them not wanting to go out, not wanting to interact with the people around them, but narrowing themselves down and they will become lazy, passive people with limited social relationships. Besides, because of this, they will also spend less time with the people they love, for their friends, ruin a relationship, even lose their feelings in the eyes of friends and relatives. Indeed, technology can continuously improve, but if people are not self-sufficient in their use, our relationships will not last.

To sum up, developments in technology can indeed harm human relationships, but it must be affirmed that technology is making people more social. However, in general, that level of society, negative or positive, depends mostly on the user's ability to control and purpose.