All this technology is making us antisocial!

All This technology is making us antisocial!

Technology in the last 30 years has slowly started making its way into our social life. In February of 1991 it started with “You Got Mail!” by AOL, then that evolved to AOL messenger as another form of communication. I remember being around 10 years old when everyone was messaging everyone and it was about how many contacts you had in your messenger and how many email contacts you had. It was great to be able to email my father that lives in Panama and he would be able to reply immediately. I still have letters saved from the time he used to send them; something we consider now as “snail mail”. At that time no one would have believed to what extent we would evolve to or even believe the point we are at today. Presently we have many options in social media or social outlets in order to get or opinions and lives out to the masses. The biggest and most popular social media outlet is Facebook in which it’s main purpose is to allow us to connect with family and old friends. We also have snapshot, Instagram, and Myspace to a lesser extent, and there are even dating applications that allow us to look for that perfect Someone or “Prince Charming”.

The generation that grew up without this technology may look at us confused and bewildered. Why are these kids on their phones and tablets so much? are normal questions asked of an older generation. They need to go out and play and explore the world, all this technology is going to burn their brains. These are the words that I would hear from my grandmother. She was born in 1928, in which you could assume is a completely different era. Is it right to blame the kids for being on their phones or their tablets so much? Or is it the parents fault for providing them with the technology and not setting the rules or making sure they have a full understanding of the rules?

According to Super Nanny Jo Frost, discipline is a way of teaching your child self-control instead of a way to control your child. Once you’ve helped build that sense of self-control, you’ve effectively taught your child the skill of disciplining himself. It is up to parents and teachers to teach their children or students this type of discipline and maybe it could change the way they interact with social media technology. It all starts at a young age; if there is a balance of technology and face to face interactions, this will improve the person’s social skills.

Is all of this technology really making us antisocial? I’m not a person that is against any platform of social media, and I do not believe that technology is making this new generation antisocial. I believe it is changing the way people are socializing within the community. People do not like what they are not used to or what they do not understand. It may seem that this generation is antisocial because they do not socialize in a verbal way or can’t hold a conversation. This generation social skills are changing towards a technology based social life.

No one can say how it is going to affect us in the future all we can do is wait. The pace of technology is moving at such a fast rate, that we can not keep up with it enough to analyze the effects. If we are able to apply this new technology in a positive way towards our children and students then both will benefit from it.

Reference

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/27/bad-parenting-lack-of-discipline-anti-social-children_n_1303887.html