Essay Sample on Technology's Impact on Friends, Family, and Classmates

Introduction

My multimodal topic is on how technology has affected friends, family, and classmates on communications and bonding (Jewitt 2012). Due to the emergence of many technological, social forums, it has taken away face-to-face interaction between friends and family, and people have preferred using technology for conversation.

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The social media above has enabled us to be connected with our friends, but we give more time to technology more than we interact with people who live together (Stafford & Hillyer, 2012). They are power electronic devices that change what we do and how we behave since we give more concentrations, and it has taken our attention. We find that some parents give attention to chat in an email during dinner and children with a start to complain that our parents do not provide us with attention. Therefore, technology has a negative impact on family changes.

In the current century, technology has played a crucial role in our lives since it facilitates instant access to information and modes of communication. Emergency email communication as a result of advancement in technology has increased the time we take to interact with technology than with friends and our families (Stafford & Hillyer, 2012). In the image illustrated above, people text and emails each other during meetings hence, concentrating more on technology than focusing on the meeting issues. Technology interaction will take us into a bad situation of preferring texting and email communication rather than a face-to-face conversation.

The image illustrates families who are together in dinner but lonely since each other has concentrated on chatting and texting in cellphones. Too much time on technology interaction, other family members, friends, and children will complain that they don't receive maximum attention as they expect. Hence, causing problems and trouble as we relate to each other (Stafford & Hillyer, 2012). In this case, when children complain about the parent's attention, they feel isolated. Too much concentration on emails, texts, and technology reduces family values since it limits face to face conversation.

The image illustrates two different families; on the right side is with technology, and on the left is pre-digital family. In the pre-digital family, they use to engage in traditional games, which bring family members together with interactive skills, hence feeling connected. In the modern family with advanced technology, they feel isolated since each person concentrated on different social media, other on emails, and playing video games (Drago, 2015). Therefore, the family is isolated despite being physically together since their minds are focused on different media, and it results in a family divide.

The development of technology has established the opportunity of working from home, and the majority was glad for the chance since they thought they would have more time to interact with their families. But in reality, working at home was challenging to manage time; hence, most find themselves working for many hours than if they were in office. From the picture above, it displays family members who use technology as they take tea to check work emails and other work duties hence abandoning a child to feel isolated (Drago, 2015). Social media, blogs, and forums have significantly increased the feeling of conversation with friends; therefore, a person used technology to connect around the globe

Technology development in communication has made us feel that we live in an era of distinction with several devices. The technological devices provide us with the sense that we are connected to friends, loved ones, and families around the World, but we are not as illustrated in the picture (Jewitt 2012). For example, the three girls meet for different reasons, but due to technology, their minds are focused elsewhere. Since they have devices that they feel connected with other friends and family that are not together in the present moment. Thus, limiting the relationships of people who are together. The three girls think that they are together from the picture illustration, but they are not. They don't concentrate on each other, but instead, each focuses on emails, chatting, texting, and playing games.

When the parents concentrate on technology as they respond to work emails and chatting, children will criticize that they do not get enough attention from their parents. Thus, children will deny themselves the right to full attention from their parents by engaging in playing games and texting, as illustrated in the picture (Hutchby & Moran-Ellis, 2013). Also, technology divide family, for instance, when couples go for breakfast in the restaurant, each of them removes the laptops on the table and concentrates on replying to job emails and chatting. This can imply that conversation does not exist between the two couples; hence, laptops are utilized to take attention as they take their breakfast. Thus, they are there but not there since they prefer chatting and texting in social media than to communicate face-to-face (Stafford & Hillyer, 2012). In a family, the human relationship is crucial and demanding. The relationship is cleaned up with technology since we sacrifice more time for mere connection than preferring the actual family bonding of face-to-face communication.

Conclusion

In conclusion, social media that we engage in as a sense of being connected with loved ones, friends and family is confronting us with temptation. Focusing mainly on social media can ruin the relationships of people we are together. This is because we focused our minds more on social media as a sense of communication rather than building a face-to-face conversation with people we are at the moment. Finally, technology ruins the family relationship between parents and children when it is deeply embedded in our lives as the priority of communicating.

References

Drago, E. (2015). The effect of technology on face-to-face communication. Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 6(1).

Hutchby, I., & Moran-Ellis, J. (2013). Children, technology, and culture: The impacts of technologies in children's everyday lives. Routledge.

Jewitt, C. (2012). Technology, literacy, learning: A multimodal approach. Routledge.

Stafford, L., & Hillyer, J. D. (2012). Information and communication technologies in personal relationships. Review of Communication, 12(4), 290-312.DOI/abs/10.1080/15358593.2012.685951