I watched a video the other day of a homeless guy who talks about his views on our society and it has really made me think. We are living in an age where technology is all around us, most of us couldn’t imagine a life without the technology that we now take for granted like the internet or our phones. These technologies have many great advantages to all aspects of life but they also have some disadvantages.

I think that the loss of personal communication is the biggest of these disadvantages, now what do I mean by personal communication, well I mean actual face to face communication in person. With the increasing amount of messaging apps, VoIP services, and social networks we no longer have the need to meet up with our friends or family to see how everything is going and what they have been up to. I am not saying that people no longer meet up with their friends or family, what I am saying is people tend to do it less frequently. The majority of people now stay in touch with them through these technological services which in my opinion reduces the relationship you have with them. When you think of someone you haven’t seen for a while you now think to yourself ‘oh I should send them a message’ instead ‘oh I should call them and see if they are free for a catch up’, you then have a long conversation through messages being distant instead of having a couple of hours of more meaningful talking and laughter and feeling the connection you actually have with your friends and family.

These services also serve as a constant distraction, not for everyone but for a lot of people. If you let all this technology and services that are around us distract you then you are letting them take some of the enjoyment away from a lot of occasions, I will give you three examples of these occasions.

1. Social occasions, the amount of times I have been out with my family or with my friends for dinner or just to have a few drinks and chat, and have seen other families or groups of friends all on their phones checking the latest status updates, messages, and posting pictures of what they are doing online for everyone else to see instead of spending time in the moment and enjoying the company of the people around them is astounding. What status update or message is more important than engaging in conversation with the people around you? I will admit there are some messages that could be more important but the large majority of them aren’t.
2. Watching tv or a film, I have often been with people who instead of watching and enjoying the thing that is on the tv they sit there with their eyes glued to their phones. How is aimlessly browsing instagram or facebook or twitter more enjoyable than the tv show or film that you wanted to watch?
3. Live events, when you go to a concert now you have probably noticed the amount of people that spend the whole time watching the concert through their phone’s camera instead of taking in their surroundings and letting themselves be truly entertained by the talent that is up on the stage and they payed to see.

I admit that I used to be one of these people, I let myself get distracted by technology. I don’t let myself anymore and things are much more enjoyable now.

The other major problem in my opinion is the change in defination of a friend, to a lot of people a friend is now someone that you are connected to on social media. I have a few questions for anyone reading this story, how many of your facebook friends are actually your friends? how many of them would help you when you are in need? how many of them do you actually see and talk to? and lastly how many of them could you describe in detail what they like to do, what their favourtie things are, what are their ambitions, and why are they your friend? To me a friend is someone who is there for you, someone you can trust and confide in, someone you have a connection with, someone who is willing to tell you stuff straight instead of dancing around the topic not someone that you kinda now or you were at school with but never exchanged more than a friendly ‘Hi’ with. It seems to be cool now to have hundreds or 1000+ friends on social media, to me this is just demeaning to what ‘friend’ stands for.

These services and technologies are only going to increase in availablity and in advancement, will our society keep getting more and more immersed in them? Who knows, that is something we are going to have to wait to find out.