In my opinion, Americans today are way more isolated, but it is not exactly "due to" technology. American teenagers now a days seem to be more social than ever... except for the fact that the social group they worry about the most is one of people they don't even know, such as Facebook "friend." Teenagers are becoming so caught up on what happens in their cyber social life that they are forgetting to live real life. I have had friends who pride themselves on the amount of Facebook friends they have, but give little attention to the real friends that participate in their lives every day, and I find that depressing. I don't know if it is because on the internet you can shape yourself in a certain way that may hide your real self and please others, but the increase in popularity of social media and the lack of education about such is making Americans more and more isolated.
It is not only the lack of educations about social media that is making Americans isolated, but the lack of education about technology in general, and how to use it in a functional way. When I was a kid back in my country, there wasn't a single day (besides rainy days maybe) that I wasn't outside playing soccer, talking to other kids, playing cards (weird, I know, but I've always liked playing cards). My house was on a hill, and I remember my friends and I playing dodge ball every weekend in my street. I remember wanting to be on the team at the top, because that way I wouldn't have to run after the ball as it rolled to the busy road. I also remember us just sitting at each other houses gates, talking about school, homework, soap operas, counting coins to see if we could go to the store and buy a cookie (to share between 2-4 of us). We often went to different schools, but unlike in America, school wasn't out life. In my culture, school is the place where you learn, and the outside world is where you make friends. You don't have to go to the same school in order to be friends. Why? Because we stick our big heads outside once in a while and meet new people. We didn't have iPods, and iPads, etc. Some of us had video games, but we never became obsessed with them, like American kids do. We all had TVs, but we also never allowed ourselves to become stuck on a couch watching TV. There was quality indoor time with family, and quality outdoor time with friends. When I arrived in america I was shocked. I was jogging in the place where I live, in a Saturday morning, and there was no one outside. I went to the grocery store, and came back in the afternoon, and there were only some kids, re-enacting horrible scenes from the ridiculously violent games American children are so fond of. I was disappointed.
To me, this is something we should be concerned about. We have never lived in an era with so much technology so readily available to the public as we do now. The adults that we know today were once kids who also played outside, and didn't have imaginary cyber friends. We don't know how our children will turn out to be, and how this isolation with affect them in the future. Don't get me wrong. technology is amazing and extremely necessary. Our society would not be functional without it, and it makes our lives much easier. I love technology, and I do own a smart phone and have a Facebook account. It would be stupid of anyone today to be opposed to technology, as it contributes to our economy, medicine, education and more. However, children are not being properly educated about technology, and they are becoming caught up on a cyber world. The solution is to educate our children to value their lives, like themselves, increase their self-esteem, so that they won't feel the necessity to please people who live in other continents and that they have never met. We need to educate them so that out society won't become even more isolated.
Americans are way more isolated than they ever were. But it is not "due to technology". It is due to the lack of education about technology.
Technology is awesome!
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