Does Technology bring us together
or tear us apart?
By: Tatiana K. Pino
English 101
Professor: Cindy Casper
Introduction
In modern days, unlike in the past 30 years,
families are spread all around the globe.
This makes people have less contact with
their own family members. Using email and
chatting software to connect with family and
friends who are far away geographically is
cheaper and easier than calling or writing
letters. When we leave the "family"
situation, the Internet can also give
businesses more opportunities than ever by
approaching techniques to another
individual in a better way with their devices,
so that they can negotiate with people that
they may never see. In situations like this,
technology brings people together. Many
social sites allow people to connect and
communicate with their circle of friends
more easily. Among these sites are
Facebook, Skype, and WhatsApp, though
other message boards and networking sites
also achieve this. With these sites, people
can share experiences, ask for advice, and
stay in contact with people who have moved
far away.
Expert Options
In How Communications Technology
Brings Generations Together Like Never
Before, Andreas Bernstrm, CEO of
Rebtel, addresses the big impact of
technology on families coming together,
since technology is giving us more options.
He says We should probably cut this call
short-its long distance, you know! in
which he is affirming by example that
before technology was around us, these
phone calls were expensive and not all
people could have afforded them at the time.
However, nowadays we can place calls,
have video chats, or face time with different
apps like Skype, WhatsApp, Fring etc., and
as we know, these apps are free, and we can
download them on any device out there.
Therefore, this will provide families with a
unique way of keeping themselves together.
Bernstrm demonstrates that before this
technology existed, families would have
family board game night which brought
more interaction between relatives.
However, he mentions about the classic
board games such as Scrabble, Yahtzee
and how they have already found a place on
smartphones, tablets, or any device. This
proves that technology can do the same, and
even more by allowing families to connect
in many ways that are fun for everyone. As
he said, medium is still the message.
Bernstrms recent report explains about the
increase of the use of technology around us;
he indicates that instant messages sent by
consumers will reach 41 billion per day in
2013, and this is more than doubling the
output of SMS messages with 19.5 billion.
Therefore, Bernstrm proves here that
technology out there is giving us more
options every time and that gets even better
because we can download these services for
free, and most of them offer many ways to
avoid expensive charges.
Similar to Bernstrms article, Monika.
Bschers article, Contemporary
Sociology is stressing the fact that mobile
communications are affecting our society.
She describes the following replacement of
co-present interaction and the effects on
social cohesion, in which she views how
people that connects through their devices
into a mutual relationship through mobile
media tear apart the social cohesion in
public areas. However, in these situations,
people think that they are having
interactions, or merging with society, but
they dont seem to know that they are
showing no interest towards people nearby.
For example, in Bschers article, they
examine the experiences of members of two
Irish sports clubs, one with person-to-person
and the other one with SMS messages. The
study shows SMS messages eliminate the
small talk that comes with a face-to-face
visit or telephone call. On the other hand,
with SMS messages they interacted in a
better way. Therefore, we can see that the
other groups engage more with each other.
Another aspect Bscher touches on is the
youth. She mentions networked
individualism, and she addresses that
young people have shown that they create
strong bonds across distances and that
maybe this should be a good research
investigation. Finally, she mentions its
complicated because in this article the
students had re-marked and proved that
mobile communications both bring us
together, and tear us apart.
While Bscher seems to agree with the
positive side of technology, In the article,
The First Decade: Has the Internet Brought
Us Together or Driven Us Apart? Johann
Hari addresses both asides of the issue. She
shares a memory about how she joins the
club of noughties, and at the time there were
200 million people with email accounts.
Nowadays, there are 3.2 billion. With this,
she is proving how the internet became so
popular and how fast it spread to her friends,
colleagues, and the world. Her article also
points out many situations in which the
technology can hurt us or help us, how
social networking is a new way of
interacting, or how people can feel closer to
others without face-to-face interaction. She
quotes now that we are in touch. What
does she mean by this? Well nowadays, by a
click of the mouse, we can connect to any
part of the world or tell what our friends are
doing by a post on Facebook, or Twitter,
while we are doing anything, as long as we
are connected to the media. However, Hari
gives us an example of pathos with her brief
experience and how this can hurt us. One
friend committed suicide and Hari went to
her Facebook page, and noticed that many
that knew the friend were leaving messages
of love and loss. She addresses how she
found herself, reading the friends old
messages in which she was trying to
communicate all the pain and isolation she
lived in, but nobody noticed and all they did
was leave her silly comments. With this,
Hari is protesting that maybe if we come to
be more conscious of what we do online,
maybe we could have stopped this situation,
or perhaps if this was a conversation in
person, we would have noticed the trial she
was in. She continues with cyberspace,
and she mentions William Gibson, who first
described cyberspace as consensual
hallucination where we pretend that we are
together, when in reality we are alone. For
her, it seemed true that night that she lost her
friend. Therefore, Hari is addressing
different points of view, and how the
internet gathers the good, the bad, all alike.
Another point of her article is how she
proves the facts of the unending social
media in a harmful way. In a brief story, she
tells us about how she is trying to write this
article and meanwhile she receives 36
emails, four texts, two phone calls, and
seven instant messenger chat requests. She
said we live in a state of permanent partial
attention, and she explains how we are
trying to focus on many tasks in the media
and how harmful this can be for us as human
beings. The logos in here will be the facts in
research done at the Loughborough
University, where recently it was found that
it takes 64 seconds for a person to recover
their focus after it is interrupted by an email.
So, if we check our emails every five
minutes, we will lose 8.5 hours a week.
In Liz Moss article, Is Technology
bringing Us Together or Pushing Us Farther
Apart? she addresses that technology is a
very important advance in our society.
However, she gives us some ethos when she
mentions a brief story of herself when she
travels to Ethiopia. She explains how on her
trip she rarely saw a cell phone or any
electronic device with such advanced
technology; she remembers clearly when she
had to send emails to her family or friends
who were waiting for any news about her
trip, and that they never received them
because they were slow and unreliable. She
then explains how things really change over
time; she said that every time she goes to
Ethiopia she notices that technology has
changed and that Wifi is available in hotels
and even restaurants. This gives the
Ethiopian people the opportunity to explore
more through the internet and in this way,
they expand their information. She says It
seems like the expansion of technology
could be bringing us together She really
has a point with her own experiences, like
how she can regularly email her friends in
Ethiopia or chat with them on iMessage or
Facebook. But, on the other hand, she
addresses how in the United States, people
can be in a busy restaurant enjoying their
drinks and appetizers; while they pull their
smartphone to Twitter feed or check
Facebook. They dont talk to each other,
instead they text, chat, or message and
therefore, she said the following
Sometimes it seems like the use of
technology could be pushing our
relationships with one another further apart.
Methods
I decided to conduct my own research into
this controversy. I wanted to come up with
different opinions and perspectives about
my topic. So, I designed a survey that I
distributed online via Facebook. The survey
contains 10 questions in total, both open and
closed questions.
To let people speak for themselves, I created
a list of questions for an open audience,
meaning for everyone. I believe that if I got
a diversity of people in my survey, this
would give me a better result in my
research. The survey was open for one week
and I have collected a total of 25 responses.
Eighteen (72%) of participants were female,
and seven (28%) were male. Adding more to
my research, nine (36%) reported being
between the ages of 35 and 44, while one
(4%) reported being between the ages of 55
and 64
Results
The survey suggests that technology is a
great tool, and that everyone can benefit
from it. In the following question Overall,
how would you rate technology?, Eighteen
(72%) of participants rated that technology
is Very Good, while there is not anyone
reporting that technology is negative, or bad.
For the average amount of time that people
give to technology (see Figure 1 below). I
asked in the past 7 days, roughly how many
total hours have you spent using Internet?
Please DO NOT include time spent on email
or performing tasks related to your job. Ten
(41.67 %) of participants reported spending
between 1 to 5 hours in the Internet.
same technology is making humans lose the
ability to interact with one another in a face-
to-face manner.
Conclusion
Part of the result of the survey conducted for
this study supports what experts already
know, how technology is changing some
aspect in society, and that there are many
benefits of this amazing technology.
However, they know that there are some that
cannot be of benefit for society.
The collected information in this research
shows that families, friends, and people in
general can continue to take advantage of
the many ways technology can bring us
together but in some cases the disadvantage
can tear us apart as well. The research seems
to show that technology can make us better
more than harm us.

Of the twenty-five total respondents, I

encountered a total of seventeen (68%) of
people who reported that one group spent
time downloading and listening to music,
podcasts, internet radio; while the other
group spent time in social networking.
Discussion
In a summary of this research, it showed that
technology is bringing us, in some part,
together. On the other hand, it can tear us
apart as well. However, researchers report
with facts that in this modern technology,
around the world, one of the best ways to
bring families, friends, or people in general
together will be the internet and the multiple
ways we can quickly make a call or video
chat to keep contact with our love ones
across the globe. Perhaps, they do mention
the big threat in our society because the