The Effect Of Technology On Social Relationships

• Virtual communication can have a negative effect on real life communication.
• As technology advances the world could become an increasingly lonely place.
• There is no substitute for real life human relationships.

One of the most detrimental consequences of social technological isolation, is the effect it has on interpersonal communication. The reasons for this are quite obvious.

When you communicate virtually or by phone, your communication is much more limited than it is when you communicate in person.

For example, talking to someone online excludes the use of body language, voice tone and eye contact from the conversation.

What this all means is that the less face to face communication you have with people, the worse your social skills are likely to be.

The effect of these poor social skills can then make it difficult for a person to form meaningful and lasting relationships outside the virtual world.

For example, they may find it difficult to communicate their message verbally, be unable to understand what people are saying to them or be unable to read the various nonverbal forms of communication which signal whether a person is interested or not in what they are saying.

Do you think this sounds far fetched? Well its not, as there are already people who are using internet slang terms such as LOL in real life conversations!

Sure this is fine if you are speaking with someone who knows what this means, but if your not, you might as well be speaking in a different language because they won’t have a clue what you are saying.

Although this is a relatively minor and uncommon example, it does show just how easily blind communication can infiltrate into real life face to face communication.

This seems to suggest that whatever other consequences virtual communication has on us (either positive or negative), will also be transferred over to the real life conversations we have.

A Lonely Future?

If we project this trend of blind communication forwards into the future and assume it continues, what sort of society will we be looking at in 20-30 years?

If the current generation of children spend most of their day watching TV and playing computer games, how will they be able to communicate effectively with others when they grow up? 

And if they are unable to communicate effectively, how will they form lasting and meaningful relationships with people?

Will these people be able to attract members of the opposite sex? And if so, how long will these relationships last if there is little or no communication in it?

Although this might all sound a bit alarmist, the warning signs are around us right now and more and more people are becoming lonely as a result.

The only way to overcome this loneliness and prevent the future from becoming a lonely place for you, is to stop ignoring your feelings or distracting yourself from them, and start listening to and appropriately responding to the messages they are telling you.

Technology Is Neutral

Before moving on to how you can deal with loneliness, I want to make it clear that I do not believe technology is bad. I see technology as being neutral. It is how you use it which determines whether it is good or bad.

I also do not think it is bad to communicate via the phone, chat online or participate in forums. This article was not meant to condemn these activities, but rather to point out the potential dangers they can lead to. Both for you, and society as a whole.

Occasional blind communication (communication which does not involve direct face to face contact) is perfectly fine in moderation.

However if technology is used as a distracter, and your predominant form of communication is blind, then your mental and physical health in addition to your social life will be adversely affected.

So as long as for most of the day you are interacting with people (in real life) your risk of being unable to develop meaningful and lasting relationships will be relatively small.

If however you spend most of your time interacting with people using a machine, be aware that your future could be a very lonely one.

Why? Because you will lack the required skills needed to successfully interact with others. A stereotypical example to demonstrate this can be found with “computer geeks”, who are stereotyped by their inability to get a girlfriend and their small circle of friends.

What really concerns me is the increasing number of people who prefer to spend time online, or as it is sometimes called “living online”, rather than interacting in the real world.

If this trend continues (which all indications seem to suggest it will) we could reach a tipping point in society where face to face interactions become a thing of the past.

If people are not interacting together, then fewer people are going to meet, fall in love and have children. Eventually this could lead to a progressive depopulation of the planet.

Although at present this trend would largely be confined to developed countries, which are able to provide their people with plentiful advanced technology. The more advanced this technology becomes, the greater its uptake is likely to be.

Dealing With Loneliness

Use the following guidelines to help you understand and respond appropriately to your loneliness.

1 – Identify The Feeling Of Loneliness

Loneliness comes as a result of having little or no meaningful relationships in your life. You can be lonely because you don’t have many friends, or lonely because you don’t have a romantic partner.

2 – Remember The Meaning Of Loneliness

Loneliness tells you that you need to find someone who you care about, and who cares about you.

3 – Decide Why you Are Feeling Lonely

Why is it that you don’t have many friends or a partner in your life? Are you unable to communicate with other people because you spend most of your time online or watching TV? Are these activities preventing you from meeting people and making new friends?

4 – Find Something To Stop Your Loneliness

If you want to make new friends, you will have to make an effort to make them.

This means interacting with as many people as possible, and forming close relationships with them through the activities you do together.

Generally speaking, the less you interact with people, the lonelier you will become.

Summary

Loneliness is an increasingly common by-product of an over reliance on technology, which is itself used as a remedy for the problem it created.

The more time you spend creating virtual relationships, or distracting yourself from your loneliness with entertainment, the harder you will find it to make meaningful and lasting relationships in the real world.

This inability to form relationships will then lead to more painful feelings of loneliness, addictions to distracters (technology), frustration and eventually depression.

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