Effects with Friends, Couples and Siblings

By: Makenna Calderon

 

            Back in the day, teens and families used to use technology for information and for entertainment, but now it is used for social media and keeping in touch with friends and family. According to Social Anxiety and Technology: Face-to-Face Communication Versus Technology Communication Among Teens, 85% of teens use some form of chat room, messaging, or email to keep in contact. This is an important statistic because this hows that more and more teens are spending more time on technology rather than spending time face-to0face with their family or the people they are talking to. Technology effects males and females in different ways, females will spend more time texting on their phone and on social media, while males will spend more time watching movies, listening to music, and watching random videos. Spending so much time on social media causes social anxiety because people re no longer talking in person, they are talking behind a screen, even when it is a phone call. Even though both males and females get social anxiety, females tend to have it worse because they are more in depth with relationships of all types.

Young teens and older teens prefer to use text messaging as a source of communication over anything else. This goes especially for females because most of them said that they are shy when it comes to talking in person, but they are way more open when it comes to talking online or over the phone. When conducting the experience, more than 50% of teens reported that they had a phone with instant messaging, having one or more email account, and had an online social site. This just shows that the internet and technology are taking over more and more as generations go on. It is all one big cycle, teens talk to their peers on social media or through technology, they lose face-to-face contact and forget how to have an actual conversation with a person, and then they just get back on technology or social media, and it will just keep circling around.

            It is not all negatives though, there are positives to technology and social media. Long distance relationships can thrive, it can provide space that you need sometimes, and allows not only families but couples to revisit their relationships and reconnect in a different way. When it comes to friends and couples, technology and social media allows people to meet new and different people to interact with people from different places, different cultures and different races. People using the internet also believe that they have higher degree of control over the interactions online rather than in person. This is true because people feel more comfortable talking through a screen and have more confidence since no one is right in front of them, it is more like using your imagination rather than reality.

            When online and having a friendship, relationship, or family on social media or the internet, your imagination is really all you can go off of. You do not know their body language, where they are, how they are feeling, or their facial expressions. When you do know these things, you have to picture and assume how they actually are. And that can sometimes get you in trouble because you do not get the true vibes of what is going on. You then start running scenarios in your head about the person whether if it is a friend, significant other, or a family member. You can also think of the worse cases when it comes to your imagination, and nothing is actually wrong. From a relationship standpoint, you can do dates online over video camera or FaceTime or just have a conversation. When that happens, that makes you miss the person so much more and not let you take what you have for granted. It can also help you reinforce boundaries with the person you want to or need to. When you are constantly with them, you can get tired of that person easily, but when you are away from one another, you do not irritate each other as often because you do not have to answer them. You can wait to call them back or text them back.

            According to Responses to Children’s Media Use in Families With and Without Siblings: A Family Development Perspective, preschoolers spend about 2 hours everyday exposed to some type of technology. This is good and bad, it allows the children to be able to use technology and be be adaptable, but also teaches them at a young age to use technology as their first choice for everything. This then leads to them being socially awkward and have social anxiety when they are teens and young adults.

            Technology effects adolescents the most because that is around the age that parents are trying to give their children more freedom, but not enough to go crazy. Adolescents at this age also lie to try to take as much control as possible and think that they know everything so they do not need super vision. Social media does not have a good impact on this part of life because teens will see others teens doing things and having more freedom than they have and that will make them want to do whatever they want more. Technology and social media have a big impact on families, friends, and couples, it is really just up to those people to decide wether or not it is for the better or for the worse. 

   

Citations:

 

Davies, J. J., & Gentile, D. A. (2012). Responses to children's media use in families with and without siblings: A family development perspective. Family Relations, 61(3), 410-425.

 

 

Pierce, T. (2009). Social anxiety and technology: Face-to-face communication versus technological communication among teens. Computers in Human Behavior, 25(6), 1367-1372.

 

 

Hertlein, K. M., & Twist, M. L. (2019). The Internet family: Technology in couple and family relationships. Routledge.