Outline:
Rough Draft:
Social media is affecting the way we interact with on another.
Technology and social media are growing everyday. Now it seems like people create newer ways to communicate with an individual, as if the other one hundred ways already made aren’t good enough. People now are so busy and overwhelmed with their lives, that we try to come up with things that will help us do things faster, a shortcut if you will. Things are always being altered to be better than it was before, faster than before. Younger generations were born into a world of technology, they do not see anything wrong with how they communicate online. In their mind they are still talking. Reaching out to eachthother faster than they normally would. Even though older genrations who missed the mark to grow up with technology think that it is overwhelming society. Younger generations are missing the point have of having a conversation with others. Taking it for granted you could say. But who is right? Is real conversation becoming a “lost art”? Or are we just using the resources that are provided to us and using it for what it was intended for? Granting all this, social media is an accessible way for an individual to communicate with another. We are starting to loose sight of what it really means to have a conversation with someone. Social media is starting to become obstructive in the ways we communicate with one another. How we prepare our future generations. As social media is growing we loose touch of each other but not in the way you think.
As previously stated younger generations, kids in elementry and middle school were born into a time were techonlogy is rapidly growing. Most were put infront of a screen from an early age, and start to learn how to use technology early on. Most childern learned how to work an I-phone before they knew how to write their name. Right from the start they were already accustomed to techonolgy and the wonders that it can bring. What they can be exposed to. Younger generations have grown use to being able to press a button and they are connected with all their friends, most they have never met they have just talked online. They become use to playing online games, going on their phones and tablets. Although they can still interact with their peers through a screen they are alone. They aren’t getting that pyhscial key interaction they actually need to develop emotion around others. To understand the emotions of their peers. In the book Emerging, there was an article written by Sherry Turkle called “The Empathy Diaries” , Turkle is asked to go consult faculty and watch the students at Holbrooke Middle School. In the article she puts in a statement by the dean of the school Ava Reade. It states: “A seventh-grader tried to exclude a classmate from a school social event… “The girl didn’t have much to say: [The seventh-grader] was almost robotic in her response. She said, “I don’t have feelings about this.” She couldn’t read the signals that the other student was hurt.” (345) This is a prime example of children missing the emotion of what psychical social interaction brings. The student couldn’t pick up on certain body and language ques, because they only have important or emotional conversations online. The students are use to expressing how they are feeling through emojis or gifs. We are already starting to see a decline in the way kids show empathy towards one another. Because of this, they are not able to carefully choose out words or statements to talk to others, based on the situation at hand. They aren’t able to recognize how they say certain things may affect others and cannot pick up on the ques a person may be showing. Going back and taking ideas from Konnikova’s article “The Limits of Friendship”, she states “we know that early childhood experience is crucial in developing those parts of the brain that are largely dedicated to social interaction, empathy, and other interpersonal concerns.” (194) She is saying without children getting use to in person social interaction, from an early age they are going to miss out on key developments that help them talk to others and hold a conversation. Important lessons and habits they need to learn that they can’t get through a screen. This problem will only continue to grow as long a technology is advancing.
When we constantly talk to our peers through a screen we get an idea of how this person is. We have grown acclimated to a persons texting style and when someone texts a certain way, or we ask them something we know for the most part how they will react and if they switch something up, we know that there is something wrong. Because their dialect/text is not the same. When talking to a person face to face they are missing those key components to determine if the person they are interacting with tone is off or they are upset. Turtle talks about this in her article, “Virtual objects can be made to simply glide along. And you, too, can glide along if that’s how things are programmed. In virtual worlds, you can face challenging encounters”. (346) This quote by Turkle can understood by someone in two ways. The first way I just stated when we only talk to someone through a screen and then interact with them face to face we cannot pick up on the mannerisms. The second way is life scenarios online compared to real life situations. Today technology has become so advanced that we can simulate real life situations like virtual reality. There are games created so that you can create a virtual life. This type of technology can be useful in someways and prepare us for most, but it will never really be the same when transferred from a virtual world to the real world. When we constantly use these tools, especially on groups that are the most impressionable, we can start to create false realities. Most will start to assume that when they are faced with a problem in real life it is like what they faced online. Which is not the case. Most online realities you have the chance to start over. You made a choice you do not like, hit the restart button. Because we are allowed to hit the restart button we will never learn how to use are reasoning skills to make the best decision. Weigh out the pros and cons. This will lead to people thinking that they can choose one choice and if it doesn’t work out, come back and choose one of the previous options they were given. Very rarely does this happen. Most of the time you have to work from the choice you made.
Generations who didn’t grow up when technology was arising might think why can’t others just leave it alone for once, why do we always resort back to it. Main reason why, we are afraid of being alone. Afraid of missing out on something when we aren’t online. Most have grown accustomed to just pulling out their phone when sitting amongst others to distract themselves, from awkward silence and situations. They have grown use to always finding something to do on their phone because others around them are. Speaking from experience their will be times where I am out with my friends and we will be talking and talking and all of the sudden we end up on our phones. Sitting in silence. We are together but disconnected. I sit there and just switch between apps I already checked because everyone around me is still on their phone. Eventually putting away my phone hoping that my friends would do the same, instead of mindlessly scrolling and hoping something interesting happens to continue to be on our phones. Rather put them away and keep creating conversations, learning how to interact with out the use and help of social media and technology.
Social media and how advanced it has gotten with how good we can edit photos, to pretend something is there when it isn’t or vise versa. Allowing others to put on a front for their peers to see. Of course everyone wants to present their best self forward all the time. When we are put into face to face interaction, it is harder to mask all our flaws we may have or the challenges we may be facing during that time. Compared to online it is easier mask all those things we may get judged for. People see social media as a way to show others what we are doing from time to time, but also to show that we are doing “okay”. That when other people look at their post, they may think that their life is perfect that they they are not facing any challenges. Which leaves people comparing themselves to others, because they want what they see. Because social media and advance technology allows us to alter many things about us, it starts to cause unintentional problems within ourselves and between peers. We start to compare our looks to others, without thinking how heavily edited that photo or video could be. Creating self doubt within us, and being jealous of what others have and we don’t.
Majority of people in highschool through college, constantly post online to show others what they are doing. We get so wrapped up in constantly trying to update people on how our lives are going through social media. Always seeing our friends post and trying to one up them. This will slowly start consume us. Infact it has already started. We will get so wrapped up in to showing everyone online what we are doing that we will tend to overshare. Either for the attention or just gain an interest of another person and create another friend online. This can start to create problems because we will start to post about things that we think is ok and it may benefit us, but really affect someone else and we wouldn’t know. A prime example of this was in the movie The Circle. Mae started her new job at the circle and was confronted for not showing and updating people about her life. She gets to a point where she posts about Mercers antler chandeliers. Although Mae had good intentions of posting Mercers work she never asked and did it really for her own interest. This caused an uproar and people were against Mercer and his work calling him names and such. This eventually led to the end of his life. What we post on social media majority of the time affects us but there is still that small percentage that what we post affects others with out us realizing it. And does more harm than good.
Technology and how fast it is advancing is beneficial for us to move forward in the world to help solve longing problems we didn’t know we could fix. But because of the rapid growth we aren’t able to slow down and take care of all the problems that popping up due to this. Almost turning a blind eye to all the negatives technology and social media brings, because a certain advancement in technology had one positive outcome. Konnikova and Turkles article as well as the Circle, write about the problems of social media. Trying to find ways we can still have this advancement but also make sure that is balanced and we get many more positive out comes than negative. Knowing that we have to find balance, before technology and social media eventually consumes all of us and rely on it for everything. Before we cut loose all the things we learned before these advancements were made.
Writing my rough draft, I get all my points on the page for my rough draft, whether it makes sense. This method of just typing and not worrying about how it sounds when reading it allowed helps me to finish my rough draft and fine-tune things that didn’t make sense for my final.
Final:
Social media is affecting the way we interact with each other.
Kassidy Bradshaw
Professor Trombley
Eng 110 H4
Technology and social media are growing every day. Now people create newer ways to communicate with an individual as if the other hundred ways already made are not good enough. People now are so busy and overwhelmed with their lives that we try to come up with things that will help them do things faster, a shortcut. Things are constantly altered to be better than it was before, faster than before. Younger generations were born into a world of technology. They do not see anything wrong with how they communicate online. In their mind, they are still talking, reaching out to each other faster than they usually would. Even though older generations who missed the mark in growing up with technology think it is overwhelming society, younger generations still need to get the point of conversing with others. Taking it for granted. However, who is right? Is real conversation becoming a “lost art”? Alternatively, are we just using the resources we are provided and using them for what they are intended for? Social media is an accessible way for an individual to communicate with another. We need to catch up on what it means to converse with someone. Social media is starting to become obstructive in the ways we communicate with one another and how we prepare our future generations. As social media is growing, we lose touch with each other but not in the way we think.
As previously stated, younger generations, kids in elementary and middle school, were born into a time where technology is rapidly growing. Most were put in front of a screen from an early age and started learning to use technology early on. Most children learned how to work an I-phone before they knew how to write their name. Right from the start, they were already accustomed to technology and the wonders that it could bring. What they can be exposed to. Younger generations have grown used to being able to press a button, and they are connected with all their friends. Most of them have never met; they have just talked online. They became used to playing online games and going on their phones and tablets. Although they can still interact with their peers through a screen, they are alone. They are not getting that physical key interaction to develop emotion around others. To better understand the emotions of their peers. In the book Emerging, there was an article written by Sherry Turkle called “The Empathy Diaries,” Turkle is asked to go consult faculty and watch the students at Holbrooke Middle School. In the article, she puts in a statement by the school’s dean Ava Reade. It states: “A seventh-grader tried to exclude a classmate from a school social event… “The girl did not have much to say: [The seventh-grader] was almost robotic in her response. She said, “I do not have feelings about this.” She could not read the signals that the other student was hurt.” (345) This is a prime example of children missing the emotion of what psychical, social interaction brings. The student could not pick up on certain body and language cues because they only have important or emotional conversations online. The students are used to expressing how they are feeling through emojis or gifs. We are already seeing a decline in how kids show empathy toward one another. Because of this, they are not able to carefully choose words or statements to talk to others based on the situation at hand. They cannot recognize how they say certain things that may affect others and cannot pick up on the cues a person may be showing. Going back and taking ideas from Konnikova’s article “The Limits of Friendship,” she states, “we know that early childhood experience is crucial in developing those parts of the brain that are largely dedicated to social interaction, empathy, and other interpersonal concerns.” (194) She is saying without children getting used to in-person social interaction, from an early age they are going to miss out on key developments that help them talk to others and hold a conversation. Essential lessons and habits they need to learn that they cannot get through a screen. This problem will only continue to grow as long as technology advances.
When we constantly talk to our peers through a screen, we get an idea of who this person is. We have grown acclimated to a person’s texting style, and when someone texts a certain way or we ask them something, we know, for the most part, how they will react, and if they switch something up, we know that there is something wrong. When their dialect/text is not the same. When talking to a person face to face, they are missing those key components to determine if the person they are interacting with tone is off or they are upset. Turtle talks about this in her article, “Virtual objects can be made to simply glide along. And you, too, can glide along if that’s how things are programmed. In virtual worlds, you can face challenging encounters”. (346) This quote by Turkle can be understood by someone in two ways. The first way I stated is that when we only talk to someone through a screen and then interact with them face to face, we cannot pick up on their mannerisms. The second way is life scenarios online compared to real-life situations. Today technology has become so advanced that we can simulate real-life situations like virtual reality. There are games created so that we can create a virtual life. This type of technology can be helpful in some ways and prepare us for most, but it will always be different when transferred from a virtual world to the real world. When we constantly use these tools, especially in the most impressionable groups, we can start to create false realities. Most will assume that when faced with a real-life problem, it is like what they face online, which is untrue. In most online realities, we have the chance to start over. We made a choice we did not like; hit the restart button. Because we can hit the restart button, we will always need to learn how to use our reasoning skills to make the best decision. Weigh out the pros and cons. This will lead to people thinking that they can choose one choice, and if it does not work out, come back and choose one of the previous options they were given. Very rarely does this happen. Most of the time, we must work from our choice.
Generations who did not grow up when technology was arising might think, why can’t others leave it alone for once? Why do we always resort back to it? The main reason why we are afraid of being alone. Afraid of missing out on something when we are not online. Most have grown accustomed to just pulling out their phone when sitting amongst others to distract themselves from awkward silence and situations. They have grown used to always finding something to do on their phone because others around them are. Speaking from experience, there will be times when I am out with my friends, and we will be talking and talking, and all of a sudden, we end up on our phones—sitting in silence. We are together but disconnected. I switch between apps I already checked because everyone around me is still on their phone. Eventually, putting away my phone, hoping that my friends would do the same instead of mindlessly scrolling and hoping something interesting happens to continue to be on our phones. Instead, put them away and keep creating conversations, learning how to interact without the use and help of social media and technology.
Social media and how advanced it has gotten with how good we can edit photos, pretend something is there when it is not, or vice versa. Allowing others to put on a front for their peers to see. Of course, everyone always wants to present their best self forward. When we are put into face-to-face interaction, it is harder to mask all the flaws or challenges we may be facing during that time. Compared to online, it is easier to mask all those things we may get judged for. People see social media as a way to show others what we are occasionally doing and that we are doing “okay.” When other people look at their posts, they may think that their life is perfect and they are not facing any challenges. This leaves people comparing themselves to others because they want what they see. Because social media and advanced technology allow us to alter many things about ourselves, it starts to cause unintentional problems within ourselves and between peers. We start to compare our looks to others without thinking about how heavily edited that photo or video could be. Creating self-doubt within us and being jealous of what others have and we do not.
Most people in high school through college constantly post online to show others what they are doing. We get so wrapped up constantly trying to update people on how our lives are going through social media. Always see our friend’s posts and try to one-up them. This will slowly start to consume us. In fact, it has already started. We will get so wrapped up in showing everyone online what we are doing that we will tend to overshare either for attention or to gain the interest of another person and create another friend online. This can create problems because we will start to post about things that we think are okay, and it may benefit us but affect someone else, and we would not know.
A prime example of this was in the movie The Circle. Mae started her new job at the Circle and was confronted for not showing and updating people about her life. She gets to a point where she posts about Mercer’s antler chandeliers. Although Mae had good intentions of posting Mercer’s work, she never asked and did it for her interest. This caused an uproar, and people were against Mercer and his work, calling him names. This eventually led to the end of his life. What we post on social media primarily affects us, but that tiny percentage of what we post affects others without us realizing it, which does more harm than good.
Technology and how fast it advances is beneficial for us to move forward in the world to help solve longing problems we did not know we could fix. However, because of this rapid growth, we cannot slow down and take care of all the problems that are popping up. Konnikova and Turkles’ article, as well as the Circle, write about the problems of social media. Almost turning a blind eye to all the negatives technology and social media brings because a specific technological advancement had one positive outcome. Trying to find ways we can still have this advancement but also make sure that it is balanced and we get much more positive outcomes than negative ones. Knowing that we must find balance before technology and social media eventually consume us and make us rely on them for everything. Before we cut loose all the things we learned before these advancements were made.
Citations
Konnikova, Maria. “The LImits of Friendship.” Emerging, edited by Barclay Barrios, Macmillan, 2022, pp.190-194.
Turkle, Sherry. “The Empathy Diaries” Emerging, edited by Barclay Barrios, Macmillan, 2022, pp. 343-352.
For my final paper, turning it, I felt like I needed more confidence in the work that I submitted. That starts with having more confidence in my writing. I felt myself repeating points I had somewhat made in my previous paper. Trying to separate the topic from paper one and from paper two was hard because both kind of went hand and hand. Which led me to get a lower grade than I wanted. Even though I got a lower grade than I expected, I have learned a lesson of coming up with more ideas than you think you need. This will ensure that I have enough ideas so that papers with similar topics do not sound the same. Overall doing the pre-steps before writing your paper, like annotating, making an outline is very helpful because by doing those things I have already written my paper. Making it easier to write my final paper when it gets closer to the due date. Comparing this paper to our learning outcomes and what we are supposed to get out of the class, this paper showed me that is is important to make sure all my points are organized and flow together to create a strong argument. It also showed where in my writing I need to focus on more in order for it to be a strong paper.
