Does Technology Connect Us or Make more Alone?

Technology has been part of our lives since the past decade when it starts to bloom out until now. We spend most of the time staring at our phones, or if not laptops browsing and feeding our egoistic mind. According to the report of CNN (Wallace, 2015), average teenager spend nine hours per day on their phones and social media. This lowers down the ability to read and respond to each other in real life and the higher chances of feeling alone as mostly depend on how technology shape self as we continue to rely on it (Turkle, 2015).

For the record there are 5.135 billion mobile users and 8.485 billion total numbers of mobile connections worldwide according to statistics released and report by We are social and Hootsuite (Kemp, 2018). And in addition to it, Philippines spend average 4 hours on social media putting it to the no. 1 spot in the survey in 3 consecutive years. Next is Brazil and Indonesia.

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” – Albert Einstein (Garson et al, 2012) . And from looking through it, it obviously does. We became digitally connected but socially disconnected to the surrounding and weren’t able to compromised the equilibrium relation of human and technology. The isolation of too much used of technology won’t nourish the capacity of solitude we want to achieve. According Turkle (2015), Solitude is important as it is where we can find ourselves to reach out to other people and form real attachments in order for us to feel less anxious and to feel alive at the same time.

Technology have done a lot of things in this era, from complex to simple, portable and accessible smartphones (Pew Research Center, 2015) and also became a tool to innovation, wilder discoveries, limitless information and social interaction through social media which become the integral part of communication. But opposite of that are the effect of excessive usage of technology, it lower task performance, increased techno stress, and lower happiness (Brooks, S., 2015). And mainly the face-to-face communication that alters family and friends relation which is very important. We became dependence on digital tools that enable us to meet varieties of people and no progress for our social development.

Only humans can connect to technology but technology can’t really connect to humans personally speaking, technology makes us even more alone when we needed a companion. If we physically need someone, we easily go to friend or anyone that is close to us, a product of socialism. So in terms of interactions, technology won’t produce the same feeling of social connectivity in life not unlike social interaction that people who feel more connected to others have lower levels of anxiety and depression. In addition, studies show they also have higher self-respect, that appears to be more cooperative, and lowers down mental health issues (Seppala, 2016). And also the positive influence of social interaction enhance good health through people’s living habit (Umberson & Montez, 2010).

There are 4 categories in social interaction as classified (Bosco, 2017).

• Exchange- effort to gain rewards
• Competition- goal which one can only achieve
• Cooperation- working together to achieve desired shared goals
• Conflict- people experience physically and socially, it strengthens group’s loyalty and focus.

Technology does produce isolation and separate us to people and environment. Technology has been a good and bad contributor to humans. But if we want change then, it’s on human mindset if they will restore humanity and build a better standard of living in using technology. Remember without human technology would be nothing. Human control how technology will affect them/us, it’s in our hand that put us into a verge of human isolation. If we continue our lifestyle it’s a choice anyone can be made. But there are a lot of solutions in order for us to regain consciousness, like we use technology in moderation. We should socialize more than we spend on gadget and a lot more ways, but again it’s on us on how we will apply it. 

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