essay on use of communication technology

Impact of Technology on the Communication

Introduction, social networks, relationships altered, globalization due to the internet, works cited.

Communication technology happens to be the main breakthrough in the contemporary world of technology. Millions of people are connected via the Internet without even leaving their houses. This presents splendid opportunities for people to make foreign friends, develop businesses, and take part in globalization. The paper is going to unveil the main opportunities and the disadvantages presented by communication technologies. The communication in front of a computer makes it easier to trespass geographical boundaries and benefit economically while joys of social face-to-face communication become a reality of the past for contemporary youth which damages the social environment greatly.

Social networks nowadays are the main means for the youth to communicate, make friends, exchange information, and most importantly have their life tracked down online. While communication has long been limited to house boundaries (the development of phone cable connection), the Internet now gives an opportunity to showcase the personal life of an individual which significantly changes the social norms. While several decades ago it was somewhat improperly to expose one’s personal life, today the revealing pictures are not a surprise within the social networks. Moreover, this makes friends take another attitude towards friendship and communication. While a decade ago it was a common tradition to go out in the evening, come over to a friend’s house, or just talk about the problems bugging, today the social network status is enough to upgrade on the events in your life.

As such, the relationships between couples have to be elaborated on within the scope of contemporary communication technologies. People stopped going out as frequently as it was before – the dating websites have taken over largely (Tarbox 27). The invasion of online dating agencies has a great impact on people’s personal life. The couples do not get to have first eye contact and talk during the first meeting. They sit by their computer and talk to someone you do not even know the real name of. Teenagers use and frequently abuse modern technologies while parents often have no idea of the current problem because of the generation gap problem. Very often the experience that can be got due to real-life chats can be much richer than talking to a friend online. The non –verbal communication skills are lost, whereas a teenager will need to use those one day (Bast 57).

Globalization has been a great push for all countries all over the world to keep up to the high standards of education (Echezona et al., 078). This is a great opportunity for people to get abroad, for example, and study there for future higher goals setting. This is what globalization is all about – the economical growth of the entire country and its separately taken citizens. This way not only labor-seeking migration is exercised; new opportunities become available for people who want and are able to keep up to high global standards. An Internet connection makes it possible to exercise free research, phone calls, and more beneficial results for the seeker.

In conclusion, it must be said that communication technologies are changing social environments greatly. The teenagers – the most active participants – are altering the social norms currently. This is going to be a social communication revolution when there will be no need to leave the house except for groceries supplies. Communication online expands geographical boundaries but lacks personal contact that making it impossible to notice different hidden meanings through non-verbal communication.

Bast, Donna, S. Teens and Computers…What’s a Parent to Do?: A Basic Guide to Social Networking, Instant Messaging, Chat, Email, Computer Set-up and More. New York: BookSurge Publishing, 2007. Print.

Echezona, Rachel. “Globalization, information revolution and Higher Education in Nigeria: The challenging roles of Library Professionals.” International Journal of Library and Information Science 1.6 (2009): 074-081.

Tarbox, Katherine. A Girl’s Life Online. London: Plume, 2004. Print.

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Promises and Pitfalls of Technology

Politics and privacy, private-sector influence and big tech, state competition and conflict, author biography, how is technology changing the world, and how should the world change technology.

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Josephine Wolff; How Is Technology Changing the World, and How Should the World Change Technology?. Global Perspectives 1 February 2021; 2 (1): 27353. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2021.27353

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Technologies are becoming increasingly complicated and increasingly interconnected. Cars, airplanes, medical devices, financial transactions, and electricity systems all rely on more computer software than they ever have before, making them seem both harder to understand and, in some cases, harder to control. Government and corporate surveillance of individuals and information processing relies largely on digital technologies and artificial intelligence, and therefore involves less human-to-human contact than ever before and more opportunities for biases to be embedded and codified in our technological systems in ways we may not even be able to identify or recognize. Bioengineering advances are opening up new terrain for challenging philosophical, political, and economic questions regarding human-natural relations. Additionally, the management of these large and small devices and systems is increasingly done through the cloud, so that control over them is both very remote and removed from direct human or social control. The study of how to make technologies like artificial intelligence or the Internet of Things “explainable” has become its own area of research because it is so difficult to understand how they work or what is at fault when something goes wrong (Gunning and Aha 2019) .

This growing complexity makes it more difficult than ever—and more imperative than ever—for scholars to probe how technological advancements are altering life around the world in both positive and negative ways and what social, political, and legal tools are needed to help shape the development and design of technology in beneficial directions. This can seem like an impossible task in light of the rapid pace of technological change and the sense that its continued advancement is inevitable, but many countries around the world are only just beginning to take significant steps toward regulating computer technologies and are still in the process of radically rethinking the rules governing global data flows and exchange of technology across borders.

These are exciting times not just for technological development but also for technology policy—our technologies may be more advanced and complicated than ever but so, too, are our understandings of how they can best be leveraged, protected, and even constrained. The structures of technological systems as determined largely by government and institutional policies and those structures have tremendous implications for social organization and agency, ranging from open source, open systems that are highly distributed and decentralized, to those that are tightly controlled and closed, structured according to stricter and more hierarchical models. And just as our understanding of the governance of technology is developing in new and interesting ways, so, too, is our understanding of the social, cultural, environmental, and political dimensions of emerging technologies. We are realizing both the challenges and the importance of mapping out the full range of ways that technology is changing our society, what we want those changes to look like, and what tools we have to try to influence and guide those shifts.

Technology can be a source of tremendous optimism. It can help overcome some of the greatest challenges our society faces, including climate change, famine, and disease. For those who believe in the power of innovation and the promise of creative destruction to advance economic development and lead to better quality of life, technology is a vital economic driver (Schumpeter 1942) . But it can also be a tool of tremendous fear and oppression, embedding biases in automated decision-making processes and information-processing algorithms, exacerbating economic and social inequalities within and between countries to a staggering degree, or creating new weapons and avenues for attack unlike any we have had to face in the past. Scholars have even contended that the emergence of the term technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries marked a shift from viewing individual pieces of machinery as a means to achieving political and social progress to the more dangerous, or hazardous, view that larger-scale, more complex technological systems were a semiautonomous form of progress in and of themselves (Marx 2010) . More recently, technologists have sharply criticized what they view as a wave of new Luddites, people intent on slowing the development of technology and turning back the clock on innovation as a means of mitigating the societal impacts of technological change (Marlowe 1970) .

At the heart of fights over new technologies and their resulting global changes are often two conflicting visions of technology: a fundamentally optimistic one that believes humans use it as a tool to achieve greater goals, and a fundamentally pessimistic one that holds that technological systems have reached a point beyond our control. Technology philosophers have argued that neither of these views is wholly accurate and that a purely optimistic or pessimistic view of technology is insufficient to capture the nuances and complexity of our relationship to technology (Oberdiek and Tiles 1995) . Understanding technology and how we can make better decisions about designing, deploying, and refining it requires capturing that nuance and complexity through in-depth analysis of the impacts of different technological advancements and the ways they have played out in all their complicated and controversial messiness across the world.

These impacts are often unpredictable as technologies are adopted in new contexts and come to be used in ways that sometimes diverge significantly from the use cases envisioned by their designers. The internet, designed to help transmit information between computer networks, became a crucial vehicle for commerce, introducing unexpected avenues for crime and financial fraud. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, designed to connect friends and families through sharing photographs and life updates, became focal points of election controversies and political influence. Cryptocurrencies, originally intended as a means of decentralized digital cash, have become a significant environmental hazard as more and more computing resources are devoted to mining these forms of virtual money. One of the crucial challenges in this area is therefore recognizing, documenting, and even anticipating some of these unexpected consequences and providing mechanisms to technologists for how to think through the impacts of their work, as well as possible other paths to different outcomes (Verbeek 2006) . And just as technological innovations can cause unexpected harm, they can also bring about extraordinary benefits—new vaccines and medicines to address global pandemics and save thousands of lives, new sources of energy that can drastically reduce emissions and help combat climate change, new modes of education that can reach people who would otherwise have no access to schooling. Regulating technology therefore requires a careful balance of mitigating risks without overly restricting potentially beneficial innovations.

Nations around the world have taken very different approaches to governing emerging technologies and have adopted a range of different technologies themselves in pursuit of more modern governance structures and processes (Braman 2009) . In Europe, the precautionary principle has guided much more anticipatory regulation aimed at addressing the risks presented by technologies even before they are fully realized. For instance, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation focuses on the responsibilities of data controllers and processors to provide individuals with access to their data and information about how that data is being used not just as a means of addressing existing security and privacy threats, such as data breaches, but also to protect against future developments and uses of that data for artificial intelligence and automated decision-making purposes. In Germany, Technische Überwachungsvereine, or TÜVs, perform regular tests and inspections of technological systems to assess and minimize risks over time, as the tech landscape evolves. In the United States, by contrast, there is much greater reliance on litigation and liability regimes to address safety and security failings after-the-fact. These different approaches reflect not just the different legal and regulatory mechanisms and philosophies of different nations but also the different ways those nations prioritize rapid development of the technology industry versus safety, security, and individual control. Typically, governance innovations move much more slowly than technological innovations, and regulations can lag years, or even decades, behind the technologies they aim to govern.

In addition to this varied set of national regulatory approaches, a variety of international and nongovernmental organizations also contribute to the process of developing standards, rules, and norms for new technologies, including the International Organization for Standardization­ and the International Telecommunication Union. These multilateral and NGO actors play an especially important role in trying to define appropriate boundaries for the use of new technologies by governments as instruments of control for the state.

At the same time that policymakers are under scrutiny both for their decisions about how to regulate technology as well as their decisions about how and when to adopt technologies like facial recognition themselves, technology firms and designers have also come under increasing criticism. Growing recognition that the design of technologies can have far-reaching social and political implications means that there is more pressure on technologists to take into consideration the consequences of their decisions early on in the design process (Vincenti 1993; Winner 1980) . The question of how technologists should incorporate these social dimensions into their design and development processes is an old one, and debate on these issues dates back to the 1970s, but it remains an urgent and often overlooked part of the puzzle because so many of the supposedly systematic mechanisms for assessing the impacts of new technologies in both the private and public sectors are primarily bureaucratic, symbolic processes rather than carrying any real weight or influence.

Technologists are often ill-equipped or unwilling to respond to the sorts of social problems that their creations have—often unwittingly—exacerbated, and instead point to governments and lawmakers to address those problems (Zuckerberg 2019) . But governments often have few incentives to engage in this area. This is because setting clear standards and rules for an ever-evolving technological landscape can be extremely challenging, because enforcement of those rules can be a significant undertaking requiring considerable expertise, and because the tech sector is a major source of jobs and revenue for many countries that may fear losing those benefits if they constrain companies too much. This indicates not just a need for clearer incentives and better policies for both private- and public-sector entities but also a need for new mechanisms whereby the technology development and design process can be influenced and assessed by people with a wider range of experiences and expertise. If we want technologies to be designed with an eye to their impacts, who is responsible for predicting, measuring, and mitigating those impacts throughout the design process? Involving policymakers in that process in a more meaningful way will also require training them to have the analytic and technical capacity to more fully engage with technologists and understand more fully the implications of their decisions.

At the same time that tech companies seem unwilling or unable to rein in their creations, many also fear they wield too much power, in some cases all but replacing governments and international organizations in their ability to make decisions that affect millions of people worldwide and control access to information, platforms, and audiences (Kilovaty 2020) . Regulators around the world have begun considering whether some of these companies have become so powerful that they violate the tenets of antitrust laws, but it can be difficult for governments to identify exactly what those violations are, especially in the context of an industry where the largest players often provide their customers with free services. And the platforms and services developed by tech companies are often wielded most powerfully and dangerously not directly by their private-sector creators and operators but instead by states themselves for widespread misinformation campaigns that serve political purposes (Nye 2018) .

Since the largest private entities in the tech sector operate in many countries, they are often better poised to implement global changes to the technological ecosystem than individual states or regulatory bodies, creating new challenges to existing governance structures and hierarchies. Just as it can be challenging to provide oversight for government use of technologies, so, too, oversight of the biggest tech companies, which have more resources, reach, and power than many nations, can prove to be a daunting task. The rise of network forms of organization and the growing gig economy have added to these challenges, making it even harder for regulators to fully address the breadth of these companies’ operations (Powell 1990) . The private-public partnerships that have emerged around energy, transportation, medical, and cyber technologies further complicate this picture, blurring the line between the public and private sectors and raising critical questions about the role of each in providing critical infrastructure, health care, and security. How can and should private tech companies operating in these different sectors be governed, and what types of influence do they exert over regulators? How feasible are different policy proposals aimed at technological innovation, and what potential unintended consequences might they have?

Conflict between countries has also spilled over significantly into the private sector in recent years, most notably in the case of tensions between the United States and China over which technologies developed in each country will be permitted by the other and which will be purchased by other customers, outside those two countries. Countries competing to develop the best technology is not a new phenomenon, but the current conflicts have major international ramifications and will influence the infrastructure that is installed and used around the world for years to come. Untangling the different factors that feed into these tussles as well as whom they benefit and whom they leave at a disadvantage is crucial for understanding how governments can most effectively foster technological innovation and invention domestically as well as the global consequences of those efforts. As much of the world is forced to choose between buying technology from the United States or from China, how should we understand the long-term impacts of those choices and the options available to people in countries without robust domestic tech industries? Does the global spread of technologies help fuel further innovation in countries with smaller tech markets, or does it reinforce the dominance of the states that are already most prominent in this sector? How can research universities maintain global collaborations and research communities in light of these national competitions, and what role does government research and development spending play in fostering innovation within its own borders and worldwide? How should intellectual property protections evolve to meet the demands of the technology industry, and how can those protections be enforced globally?

These conflicts between countries sometimes appear to challenge the feasibility of truly global technologies and networks that operate across all countries through standardized protocols and design features. Organizations like the International Organization for Standardization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and many others have tried to harmonize these policies and protocols across different countries for years, but have met with limited success when it comes to resolving the issues of greatest tension and disagreement among nations. For technology to operate in a global environment, there is a need for a much greater degree of coordination among countries and the development of common standards and norms, but governments continue to struggle to agree not just on those norms themselves but even the appropriate venue and processes for developing them. Without greater global cooperation, is it possible to maintain a global network like the internet or to promote the spread of new technologies around the world to address challenges of sustainability? What might help incentivize that cooperation moving forward, and what could new structures and process for governance of global technologies look like? Why has the tech industry’s self-regulation culture persisted? Do the same traditional drivers for public policy, such as politics of harmonization and path dependency in policy-making, still sufficiently explain policy outcomes in this space? As new technologies and their applications spread across the globe in uneven ways, how and when do they create forces of change from unexpected places?

These are some of the questions that we hope to address in the Technology and Global Change section through articles that tackle new dimensions of the global landscape of designing, developing, deploying, and assessing new technologies to address major challenges the world faces. Understanding these processes requires synthesizing knowledge from a range of different fields, including sociology, political science, economics, and history, as well as technical fields such as engineering, climate science, and computer science. A crucial part of understanding how technology has created global change and, in turn, how global changes have influenced the development of new technologies is understanding the technologies themselves in all their richness and complexity—how they work, the limits of what they can do, what they were designed to do, how they are actually used. Just as technologies themselves are becoming more complicated, so are their embeddings and relationships to the larger social, political, and legal contexts in which they exist. Scholars across all disciplines are encouraged to join us in untangling those complexities.

Josephine Wolff is an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Her book You’ll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches was published by MIT Press in 2018.

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Is Technology Enhancing or Hindering Interpersonal Communication? A Framework and Preliminary Results to Examine the Relationship Between Technology Use and Nonverbal Decoding Skill

Mollie a. ruben.

1 Department of Psychology, University of Maine, Orono, ME, United States

2 Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research, VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, United States

Morgan D. Stosic

Jessica correale, danielle blanch-hartigan.

3 Department of Natural and Applied Sciences, Bentley University, Waltham, MA, United States

Associated Data

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Digital technology has facilitated additional means for human communication, allowing social connections across communities, cultures, and continents. However, little is known about the effect these communication technologies have on the ability to accurately recognize and utilize nonverbal behavior cues. We present two competing theories, which suggest (1) the potential for technology use to enhance nonverbal decoding skill or, (2) the potential for technology use to hinder nonverbal decoding skill. We present preliminary results from two studies to test these hypotheses. Study 1 ( N = 410) found that global screen time was unrelated to nonverbal decoding skill. However, how participants spent their time using technology mattered. Participants who reported more active technology use (i.e., posting content) self-reported that their nonverbal decoding skill (as measured by the Emotional Sensitivity subscale of the Social Skills Inventory) was superior but performed worse on objective measures of decoding skill (using standardized tests including the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-Adult Faces and the Workplace Interpersonal Perception Skill). By contrast, passive users performed significantly better on objective measures of nonverbal decoding skill; although they did not self-report any difference in their skill compared to less passive users. Study 2 ( N = 190), and a mini-meta analysis of both studies, replicated this pattern. These effects suggest a roadmap for understanding the theoretical relationship between technology use and nonverbal communication skills. We also provide recommendations for future research, including the use of experimental designs to determine causal pathways and to advance our conceptual understanding of the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill.

Introduction

A young-professional is woken up to the sound of a buzzing alarm, and grudgingly rolls over to grab their phone. Perhaps this individual begins their morning by passively scrolling through their Facebook feed in order to determine their colleague’s reaction to the heated presidential debate the night before. Or maybe they snap a quick picture of their #OOTD (i.e., Outfit of the Day) to send to their close friend. After returning home from a long day of work-based videoconference calls, this individual may spend the next few hours sucked into the whereabouts of their favorite social media influencer, or casually swiping through some dating profiles. Before retiring to bed, however, they make sure to post a quick inspiring quote to their Twitter profile.

This scenario, while fictitious, illustrates the increasing relationship many individuals have with technology from the instant they wake up, to the instant they go to bed. Technology serves various functions, from increasing office productivity, facilitating big data collection, enhancing record keeping, and above all else, providing a distinctly digital way for humans to communicate with one another. Indeed, the rate of communicative instances via technology per day in 2020 is astounding: 350 million photos uploaded to Facebook, 500 million tweets, 3 billion snapchats, and over 26 billion texts by Americans alone ( Aslam, 2020a , b ; Sayce, 2020 ; Tocci, 2020 ).

While the digital revolution has certainly changed the way individuals can communicate, little empirical results exists regarding the effect of technology on an individual’s communication skills. Specifically, because technology markedly changes the available information individual’s use to decode the communicative intents of others (e.g., determining a friend’s emotional state via short text message instead of their facial expression), are those who spend large quantities of time communicating online better or worse decoders of nonverbal information? Not only is nonverbal decoding a crucial component of general social and communication skills, but it has been tied to better interpersonal outcomes (e.g., Hall et al., 2009 ), can be easily assessed with validated, reliable, and standardized objective measures, and can be improved with practice and feedback trainings (e.g., Schlegel et al., 2017b ). Therefore, the question of whether technology may affect nonverbal decoding, or how accurately a perceiver can recognize and interpret the nonverbal behaviors of another person, is important to empirically address.

Supplementing or even fully replacing face-to-face communication with technology-mediated communication affects both the number of nonverbal cues, as well as the types of nonverbal cues that individuals use to decode communicative meaning ( Vinciarelli, 2017 ). For example, text messages may not allow access to important vocal cues (e.g., pitch, tone, inflections), but may have distinct timing and spacing cues to draw from Döring and Pöschl (2008) . By contrast, video conferencing technologies may allow access to vocal cues, but may limit the ability to engage in mutual eye gaze or perceive body movements and gestures ( Ferrán-Urdaneta and Storck, 1997 ; Neureiter et al., 2013 ). If individuals rely more heavily on technology-mediated, as opposed to face-to-face, interactions as a primary means of communication, it seems likely that the nonverbal decoding skill individuals ordinarily employ in face-to-face communication would be impacted (e.g., worsened, or perhaps enhanced).

This paper applies communication skills theories and conceptual accounts of technology use to examine the role of technology use on an individual’s ability to accurately perceive the nonverbal behavior displayed by others (i.e., nonverbal decoding skill). For the purposes of this paper, we define technology use as any technology or application on a smart phone that contributes to communication online (e.g., use of social media sites, texting, emailing). Cell phone use is the predominant method of technology use by young adults in the United States today with 96% of 18–26 years-old young adults reporting ownership of a smart phone ( Pew Research Center., 2019 ). Therefore, for the remainder of the paper, when discussing technology use, we are referring specifically to smart phone use.

We start by reviewing two competing hypotheses, that technology use either enhances or hinders communication skills. We then present results from two cross-sectional studies and a mini meta-analysis of these studies on the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill to inform our understanding of which of the competing hypotheses is more likely supported. Finally, we make recommendations for future research aimed at disentangling the causal relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill.

Technology Use May Enhance Communication Skills

The most effective way to improve nonverbal decoding skill is by practicing decoding nonverbal cues and receiving feedback on the accuracy of one’s perceptions ( Blanch-Hartigan et al., 2012 ; Schlegel et al., 2017a ). Regarding the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill, some theorists have argued that technology-mediated communication may enhance communication skills by providing a safe environment to practice sending and receiving nonverbal cues, and allowing for feedback regarding the accuracy of one’s perceptions (e.g., Stritzke et al., 2004 ; Ellison et al., 2007 ; Valkenburg and Peter, 2009 ). Because it is unusual in face-to-face interactions to receive feedback about one’s decoding ability, it may be that spending more time using technology to interact with others may facilitate face-to-face interactions by providing this type of practice and feedback to users on a regular basis.

Liberated Relationship Perspective

One hypothesis which falls into this “enhancement” framework is the Liberated Relationships Perspective ( Hu et al., 2004 ). This theory argues that increased internet usage has allowed individuals who may not typically engage in conversation the opportunity to engage with one another through technology-mediated communication. Some of the constraints may be psychological, such as in cases of shyness and social anxiety ( Stritzke et al., 2004 ), or physical, such as in cases of distant geographical locations ( Ellison et al., 2007 ). According to this framework, internet usage may afford an increase in the number of interactions an individual is able to engage in. If the internet supplements, instead of detracts from, face-to-face interactions, individuals may have increased opportunities to practice nonverbal decoding with a greater number and variety of communication partners.

Internet Enhanced Self-Disclosure Hypothesis

While not directly related to communication skill, the Internet Enhanced Self-Disclosure Hypothesis also provides support for improved nonverbal decoding skill with increased technology use ( Valkenburg and Peter, 2009 ). This theory posits that greater technology use may enhance social connectedness and wellbeing by enhancing online self-disclosure . The authors define online self-disclosure as “online communication about personal topics that are typically not easily disclosed, such as one’s feelings, worries, and vulnerabilities” (p. 2). Because online platforms allow for the sharing of intimate information to a significantly greater degree than do face-to-face interactions, it is likely that individuals are afforded more opportunities to practice decoding and receive feedback regarding affective information. Individuals who engage in technology-mediated communication more frequently may become more skilled decoders of nonverbal information, perhaps for affective information in particular.

Technology Use May Hinder Communication Skills

While these two “enhancement” theories describe the ways in which increased technology usage may allow individuals more opportunities to practice decoding nonverbal communication, others have argued a competing perspective. Specifically, researchers have argued that technology may hinder specific communication skills. Spending time communicating via technology may result in less face-to-face interactions and therefore less practice decoding nonverbal information in whole, as well as from specific cue channels (e.g., vocal tone) which are reduced or absent in many technology platforms ( Kraut et al., 1998 ; Nie, 2001 ; Patterson, 2019 ). In this way, the type of communication skills learned or practiced in technology-mediated communication are not equivalent to, and may even hinder, the skills required to decode nonverbal behavior in face-to-face interactions.

Reduction Hypothesis

In the early 1990s, several researchers theorized that the internet had detrimental effects on adolescent wellbeing and social connectedness ( Kraut et al., 1998 ; Nie, 2001 ). It was assumed that because the internet motivates adolescents to form superficial online relationships with strangers that are less beneficial than their real-world relationships, time spent online occurs at the expense of time spent with existing relationships. The Reduction Hypothesis posits that it is the lack of or decrease in face-to-face interacting that leads to detrimental communicative consequences rather than technology itself ( Valkenburg and Peter, 2009 ).

Valkenburg and Peter (2009) propose two important updates to this theory based on changes in how individuals use the internet to communicate since the Reduction Hypothesis was first introduced. First, in the second half of the 1990s, it was hard to maintain a pre-existing social network on the internet because not a lot of people had access to it, often resulting in online friends separate from offline friends. Today, with more widespread access and utilization of the internet and social media, individuals spend more time online connecting with people they also spend time with in face-to-face interactions as opposed to forming online-only relationships with strangers ( Valkenburg and Peter, 2009 ). However, the communication skills, such as nonverbal decoding, that individuals develop through online interactions may not translate to actual face-to-face interactions. As such, time spent online may stunt the development of nonverbal decoding necessary for face-to-face interactions. Therefore, although our internet habits have changed, the Reduction Hypothesis is still relevant to theorizing regarding the effects of technology use on nonverbal decoding ability.

Cues-Filtered–Out Theory

In addition to reducing the amount of time individuals spend interacting face-to-face, theorists have also noted that many technology-mediated communication platforms greatly reduce both the number as well as the kinds of nonverbal cues technology users are exposed to. Cues absent from some technology-mediated communication (e.g., social media, texting, emailing) can include physical appearance, tone of voice, facial expression, gaze, posture, touch, space, and gestures ( Kiesler et al., 1984 ; Siegel et al., 1986 ). These nonverbal cues are important in expressing relative status, affect, relationship roles, and many other interpersonal dimensions. This Cues-Filtered-Out Theory ( Culnan and Markus, 1987 ; Sproull and Kiesler, 1986 ) suggests that without these cues available, especially for low bandwidth technology (i.e., communication systems with access to only one or two channels such as vocal, kinesics, or proxemics), certain communicative functions are lost. Although higher bandwidth systems may allow for certain nonverbal cues, these cues are often more obvious and lack complexity, which may cause individuals to lose the ability to decode more subtle nonverbal cues (e.g., facial expressions are more complex than emoji’s, vocal intensity is more complex than CAPITALIZING words). Therefore, this theory suggests that the filtering out of important nonverbal cues (e.g., especially for individuals who use low bandwidth technology systems) impacts an individual’s ability to receive practice and feedback on the accuracy of their nonverbal decoding attempts, thereby hindering nonverbal decoding skill ( Walther and Parks, 2002 ).

Current Research and Hypotheses

The primary objective of the current research is to empirically examine the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill via two studies and a mini meta-analysis combining results from these two studies. Because individuals may use technology the same amount but differ in how they spend their time online, we measured users’ online communication activity via objective global screen time use taken from iPhone users, as well as the degree of self-reported active technology use (posting selfies and photographs, responding to others’ posts) and the degree of self-reported passive technology use (scrolling through photographs and others’ posts but not responding or posting themselves). In addition, we also sought to be thorough in our assessment of nonverbal decoding skill, as researchers have demonstrated that there are different kinds of decoding skills subsumed by a higher-order global decoding skill ( Schlegel et al., 2017a ). Therefore, we employed three distinct measures of nonverbal decoding, two objective assessments of skill using a standardized, validated, and reliable test of emotion recognition [i.e., Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-Adult Faces (DANVA-2AF; Nowicki and Duke, 1994 )] and a newly developed test that assesses relevant decoding ability in the workplace such as inferring behavioral intentions, personality traits, status, interpersonal attitudes (dominance/cooperativeness and motivations), behavioral outcomes, and thoughts and feelings [i.e., the Workplace Interpersonal Perception Skill (WIPS; Dael et al., in preparation )], and one self-report measure [the Emotional Sensitivity subscale of the Social Skills Inventory (SSI; Riggio, 2005 )]. Together, we utilized these various measures of technology and nonverbal decoding skill in order to test the preceding competing hypotheses: (1) more technology use is related to better nonverbal decoding skill vs. (2) more technology use is related to poorer nonverbal decoding skill.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

Data were collected from 410 participants in the University of Maine introductory participant pool for a study on perceiving nonverbal signals in others. Of these, 51% were male and 48% were female. A total of 377 (92%) participants identified as white, 15 (4%) as Asian, 14 (3%) as American Indian or Alaska Native, 12 (3%) as Black, 2 (0.5%) as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and 33 (8%) as Other. Their ages ranged from 18 to 29 ( M = 19.09, SD = 1.56). A power analysis conducted using G ∗ Power ( Faul et al., 2007 ) assuming a small to medium effect ( r = 0.15) of technology use on nonverbal decoding skill indicated that 343 participants would be needed to achieve 80% power using an alpha level of 0.05 (two-tailed). The final sample of participants exceeds this threshold, indicating that the present study is sufficiently powered to detect small to medium effects.

Technology Use

Three separate measures of technology use were collected from participants. For iPhone users, participants were instructed to navigate to their phone settings and extract their average daily screen time over the last 7 days in minutes ( N = 263). This screen time metric is a real-time report of how much time a participant spends with their phone screen turned on in an average week (i.e., listening to music with one’s screen off is not included). To ensure participants did not alter their responses in order to appear more socially desirable, we also required that they upload a screenshot of this information. In addition to this objective measure of technology use, participants were asked to self-report on a scale of 0–10 from “does not describe me at all” to “describes me very well” how well the following statements described their technology use, “I tend to be an active user, posting frequently” and “I tend to be a passive user, scrolling through posts and photos.” These two questions comprised our self-report measures of technology use: the degree to which a participant endorsed themselves as an active user separately from the degree to which a participant endorsed themselves as a passive user. Because active user endorsement and passive user endorsement were single item questions rather than a single bipolar item, participants could report any combination of active and passive technology use. That is, a participant could endorse a high degree of active use and a high degree of passive use, they could report a low degree of both, or a high degree of one and not the other. For all analyses, we entered both continuous variables to examine how the independent contribution of active and passive use predicted our outcomes of interest.

Nonverbal Decoding Measures

The newly developed WIPS test (Workplace Interpersonal Perception Skill; Dael et al., in preparation ; a = 0.67) assesses multiple aspects of decoding skill using 41 brief video segments with and without sound from three types of role-played workplace interactions: a recruiter-applicant negotiation, a helpdesk trouble-shooting scenario, and a company team meeting. Each segment is paired with a multiple-choice question for which the correct answer was based on actual behavior (what happened in the interaction during or after the video segment), instructions that the actors received (e.g., to be competitive), actors’ self-reported personality, or post-interaction evaluations (e.g. perceptions of the other as competitive) and response options varied from 2 options to 6 options depending on the item. In this way, participants must decode multiple simultaneous nonverbal cues (e.g., tone of voice, facial expression) in order to accurately assess the interpersonal characteristics of any given situation. For some items, the video consisted of multiple short segments (e.g., You will see the same person in two different negotiations signing a contract. In which negotiation did the person negotiate the better deal for herself?) while other videos were based off of just one video (e.g., In the following video, you will see 6 people enter the room for a team meeting. Who is the team leader?). Accuracy is calculated as the proportion correct responses compared against a criterion or correct response for each segment.

Participants also completed the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-Adult Faces (DANVA-2AF; Nowicki and Duke, 1994 ; a = 0.60), a test of emotion recognition ability using static and posed photographs. This measure presents 24 photographs of adult faces with high and low intensity portrayals of the four basic emotions of happiness, anger, sadness, and fear. Accuracy was calculated as the proportion correct.

Finally, participants completed the Emotional Sensitivity (ES; a = 0.80) subscale of the Social Skills Inventory (SSI; Riggio, 2005 ). The ES subscale consists of 15 self-report items, with a 5-point response scale ranging from “Not at all like me” to “Exactly like me.” The ES subscale specifically assesses self-reported skill for decoding emotional and other nonverbal messages (e.g., I always seem to know what people’s true feelings are no matter how hard they try to conceal them) . For analysis purposes, a sum was calculated across items.

Our second study was an exact replication of Study 1 launched approximately 3 months after Study 1 with data from 190 participants from the University of Maine introductory participant pool. Because we had not hypothesized a priori the effect of active and passive technology use on nonverbal decoding skill, we wished to collect a second sample of participants in order to investigate whether the pattern of results we describe in Study 1 would replicate. The demographics of this second sample were comparable to those from our first study, with 91 male participants (48%) and 99 females (52%). Of these, 179 (94%) identified as white, 9 (5%) as Asian, 5 (3%) as Black, 2 (1%) as American Indian or Alaska Native, 1 (0.5%) as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and 6 (3%) as Other. Participant’s ages ranged from 18 to 31 ( M = 19.43, SD = 1.57). A power analysis conducted using G ∗ Power ( Faul et al., 2007 ) assuming a small to medium effect derived from Study 1 ( r = 0.20) indicated that 191 participants would be needed to achieve 80% power using an alpha level of 0.05 (two-tailed).

To test our competing hypotheses about the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill, we first examined bivariate correlations between our study variables. Next, we ran a series of linear regressions on the whole sample in Study 1 and Study 2 controlling for participant gender to examine the independent contribution of active and passive technology use on each of our nonverbal decoding skill measures (accuracy scores on the WIPS test, accuracy scores on the DANVA, and self-reported emotional sensitivity).

To combine results from Study 1 and Study 2, a mini meta-analysis ( Goh et al., 2016 ) was performed for each technology use variable and each nonverbal decoding variable. We used fixed effects in which the mean effect size (i.e., mean correlation) was weighted by sample size. All correlations were Fisher’s z transformed for analyses and converted back to Pearson correlations for presentation.

Means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations are presented in Table 1 . Contrary to what would be predicted by either theoretical framework, screen time use was unrelated to every measure of nonverbal decoding skill we employed. However, when examining the ways in which participants self-reported spending their time online, a more complex pattern emerged. Specifically, more active technology use was related to higher self-reported nonverbal decoding skill ( r = 0.20, p < 0.001) but lower accuracy score on the WIPS ( r = −0.17, p < 0.001). That is, participants who identified as more active users (i.e., posting frequently) believed that they were better judges of others’ nonverbal communication, but performed significantly worse on an objective test of nonverbal decoding skill (i.e., the WIPS test). On the other hand, participants who reported being more passive users (i.e., reading through posts and looking at other people’s photographs) were significantly more accurate in decoding nonverbal behavior, as measured by the WIPS ( r = 0.14, p = 0.005), although they did not self-report any differences in their nonverbal decoding skills from less passive users as highlighted by the correlation between passive user endorsement and self-reported skill on the ES subscale of the SSI ( r = 0.04, p = 0.484). Neither self-reported passive nor active technology use was significantly related to an individual’s ability to decode facial expressions of emotions, measured via the DANVA-2AF ( p ’s > 0.07).

Study 1 and study 2 means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations between technology use, nonverbal decoding skill, and gender.

Gender, Technology Use, and Nonverbal Decoding Skill

Because active and passive technology use were not mutually exclusive (i.e., an individual could report being high on active and passive use), and because gender is related to both technology use ( Jackson et al., 2008 ) as well as nonverbal decoding skill ( Hall and Gunnery, 2013 ), we wished to determine the independent effects of active and passive technology use on nonverbal decoding skill while controlling for gender. Therefore, we first entered active use, passive use, and gender into a regression predicting accuracy scores on the WIPS. Active use remained a significant negative predictor (β std = −0.21, p < 0.001; Table 2 ), suggesting that those who are more active users were worse at decoding nonverbal behavior. Passive use also remained a significant positive predictor (β std = 0.11, p = 0.02), where those who reported spending their time looking at others’ posts and pictures were more accurate in decoding nonverbal behavior. Further, these two effects were significant even after controlling for gender, which also significantly predicted higher scores on the WIPS test (β std = 0.21, p < 0.001; female coded as 1, male coded as 0). Approximately 8% of the variance in WIPS test scores was accounted for when active use, passive use, and gender were entered as predictors.

Regression results from study 1 and study 2 examining the independent contribution of technology use variables on nonverbal decoding skill.

We next entered active use, passive use, and gender into a regression predicting accuracy scores on the DANVA-2AF. None of these variables, apart from gender (β std = 0.17, p = 0.001), significantly predicted scores on the DANVA-2AF ( Table 2 ). Approximately 4% of the variance in DANVA-2AF scores was accounted for by these predictor variables.

When active use, passive use, and gender were entered into a regression predicting self-reported nonverbal decoding skill, active use remained a significant positive predictor (β std = 0.18, p < 0.001), such that those who were more active users self-reported that they were better at decoding nonverbal information from others ( Table 2 ). While more passive use was unrelated to self-reported nonverbal decoding skill, gender remained a marginally significant positive predictor (β std = 0.10, p = 0.052) indicating that females reported being more skilled nonverbal decoders than males. Approximately 5% of the variance in self-reported nonverbal decoding skill was accounted for when active use, passive use, and gender were entered as predictors.

While results from Study 1 were neither supportive of an enhancing or suppressing effect of global technology usage on nonverbal decoding skill, we did find that the ways individuals used technology mattered (i.e., actively versus passively). Because this active/passive relationship was not hypothesized a priori , we examined these effects in a separate sample of participants. Therefore, akin to Study 1, we first examined the bivariate correlations between our measures of technology use and nonverbal decoding skill. We once again found that screen time use was unrelated to objective measures of nonverbal decoding skill—i.e., the DANVA and WIPS ( p’s > 0.20). However, in Study 2 objective screen time use was significantly and positively related to self-reported nonverbal decoding skill ( r = 0.17, p = 0.050) ( Table 1 ).

Replicating Study 1’s findings, active technology use was also related to higher self-reported nonverbal decoding skill ( r = 0.25, p = 0.001), but lower objective nonverbal decoding skill as measured by the WIPS ( r = −0.16, p = 0.028). Individuals who identified as more passive users were once again significantly more accurate in decoding nonverbal behavior, as measured by the WIPS ( r = 0.27, p < 0.001), although they did not self-report any differences in their nonverbal decoding skills from less passive users ( r = −0.03, p = 0.653). Neither self-reported passive nor active technology use was significantly related to an individual’s ability to decode facial expressions of emotions, measured via the DANVA-2AF ( p’s > 0.167).

We deconstructed these effects by entering active use, passive use, and gender into three separate linear regressions predicting the WIPS, DANVA-2AF, and self-reported nonverbal decoding skill. We regressed our three predictor variables on scores from the WIPS. Replicating regression results from Study 1, active technology use was a marginally significant negative predictor of nonverbal decoding skill (β std = −0.13, p = 0.085), passive use remained a significant positive predictor of nonverbal decoding skill (β std = 0.25, p = 0.001), and gender was a significant predictor, with females scoring higher on the WIPS test compared to males (β std = 0.27, p < 0.001). This model accounted for 15% of the variance in WIPS scores.

Next, we regressed active use, passive use, and gender on scores from the DANVA-2AF. Once again, gender was the only significant positive predictor (β std = 0.32, p < 0.001), with females scoring significantly higher than males. Approximately 11% of the variance in DANVA-2AF scores was accounted for by these three predictors.

When active use, passive use, and gender were entered into a regression predicting self-reported nonverbal decoding skill, active use was a significant positive predictor, similar to Study 1, (β std = 0.21, p = 0.006), such that those who were more active technology users self-reported having more skill in decoding nonverbal information. Reporting more passive technology use was unrelated to self-reported nonverbal decoding skill. Gender remained a significant positive predictor (β std = 0.31, p < 0.001) indicating that females self-reported more nonverbal decoding skill than males. Approximately 16% of the variance in self-reported nonverbal decoding skill was accounted for when active use, passive use, and gender were entered as predictors.

Mini Meta-Analysis

Finally, we conducted a mini meta-analysis ( Goh et al., 2016 ) in order to provide a consistent account regarding the relationship between technology use and objective and self-reported measures of nonverbal decoding skill across these two studies. After combining these effects across both studies, we found that individuals who self-reported more active technology use self-reported higher nonverbal decoding skill (M r = 0.22, p < 0.001), but scored lower on one objective index of nonverbal decoding skill (i.e., the WIPS test: M r = −0.17, p < 0.001). Moreover, individuals who self-reported more passive use scored significantly higher on both objective indices of nonverbal decoding (i.e., the WIPS test: M r = 0.18, p < 0.001 and the DANVA2-AF: M r = 0.09, p = 0.023), but did not self-report higher levels of nonverbal decoding skill (M r = 0.02, p = 0.667; Table 3 ).

Mini meta-analysis results from study 1 and study 2 examining combined correlations between measures of technology use and nonverbal decoding skill.

While many have theorized about the potential positive or negative effects that technology may have on communication skills, no studies to date have empirically examined the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill. In order to begin to understand the ways in which technology use and nonverbal decoding skill are related, we measured multiple facets of each construct to more thoroughly examine their empirical relationships with one another.

While overall screen time was unrelated to any measure of nonverbal decoding skill, interesting and consistent patterns emerged when looking at the way individuals spent their time using technology. Specifically, individuals who reported actively posting and engaging with technology-mediated communication self-reported that they were more accurate at decoding the nonverbal behaviors of others. However, these more active users were more likely to score lower on objective measures of nonverbal decoding skill. Conversely, individuals who reported spending their time online passively viewing others’ posts and photos scored higher on objective nonverbal decoding skill but did not self-report that their skills were any better.

These findings lend support to the role of practice and feedback as an effective way to increase nonverbal decoding skill ( Blanch-Hartigan et al., 2012 ). Passive users of communication technology likely receive practice in decoding nonverbal cues simply by being exposed to other users’ content (e.g., pictures, posts, videos) and thus a greater frequency of nonverbal cues. Indeed, the average screen time reported across both studies was about 5 h a day, meaning that passive users may spend up to 5 h each day practicing decoding nonverbal cues. In contrast to “other-focused” passive users, active users likely lose out on a plethora of communication cues as they report spending their time online engaging in “self-focused” activities. That is, although active users likely receive a great deal of practice encoding their own thoughts, feelings, attitudes, etc., they do not receive this same practice when it comes to decoding the thoughts, feelings, attitudes, etc. of others.

Therefore, these results support both the hypothesis that technology use enhances nonverbal decoding skill, and the hypothesis that technology use worsens nonverbal decoding skill. The key lies in how one spends their time using technological platforms. Those who use technology to practice making judgments of others may benefit from time online and learn skills to enhance their face-to-face interactions. However, greater technology use may have the opposite effect for those who choose to spend their time online creating and posting their own content, instead of interacting with the content of others. In these cases, technology may have adverse effects on an individual’s nonverbal decoding skill in face-to-face interactions.

The current research is not without limitations. First, we are limited by our homogenous sample of college participants in one US state. More research is needed to see if the relationship between active and passive technology use and nonverbal decoding skill will generalize more broadly. In addition, while the WIPS test has many advantages to other tests of nonverbal decoding ability (e.g., good reliability and validity, real-world workplace context, dynamic stimuli, many domains of nonverbal sensitivity), it is not yet a published, validated test of decoding ability. Additionally, although self-reporting active and passive technology use provides valid information regarding the way participant’s view their online activity, or the way they are motivated to be, future studies should confirm these self-reports with objective measures in order to assess the accuracy of individual’s self-perceptions. We also examined one aspect of technology use on smartphone devices and the questions focused on self-reported social media use. The role of other technology-mediated communication platforms, such as teleconferencing or interactive video gaming, deserve future study. In our regression models, only 4–16% of the variance in decoding skills was explained by our predictors; therefore, there are many other factors that impact decoding skill ability which should be explored in future work. While the WIPS test is not validated yet (i.e., in prep), it is more ecologically valid than many other available standardized tests of decoding ability because it includes many workplace scenarios and dynamic video rather than focusing on one domain (e.g., emotion recognition like the DANVA-2AF) or using just static photographs where participants often show a ceiling effect on accuracy. In addition, and explained extensively below, we cannot make causal claims about the direction of the relationships given that our data was cross-sectional.

Suggestions to Further Theories of Technology Use and Nonverbal Decoding Skill

Although our data suggest that the way in which an individual communicates with technology may impact nonverbal decoding skills globally (i.e., as measured by the WIPS test), we only observed a marginally significant effect to suggest that technology use was related to an individual’s ability to decode facial expressions of emotion measured via the DANVA-2AF. While it may be that technology truly does not impact this facet of nonverbal decoding skill, it is also possible that we did not measure technology use at a detailed enough level to reveal any meaningful relationships. Although participants reported technology use generally, different social media and technology communication platforms are vastly different in their bandwidth and each emphasize distinct cue channels. For example, while some platforms emphasize visual cues (e.g., Instagram, Snapchat) others may underscore more verbal cues (e.g., Facebook, Twitter). Collapsing technology use across all platforms may dilute interesting relationships between particular social media apps, cue channels, and nonverbal decoding skill. For instance, it may be that individuals who passively use applications which highlight posting pictures or videos receive more practice in decoding facial expressions, and therefore may score higher on emotion decoding tests such as the DANVA-2AF. Therefore, we urge future researchers to be thoughtful in selecting the most relevant nonverbal decoding skill measure for their particular study Stosic and Bernieri (in prep) taking into account domain (e.g., emotion recognition or general workplace decoding skills) as decoding ability does not appear to be a single skill ( Schlegel et al., 2017a ), and to further explore the ways in which specific technology-mediated platforms, opposed to global technology use, impact vital communication skills.

In addition to delineating more precise constructs, the areas of technology and nonverbal communication research would benefit from an increase in experimental designs. While we have interpreted our data as technology use potentially influencing nonverbal decoding skills, it is highly plausible that the causal relationship is reversed. Individuals who are more accurate perceivers of others’ nonverbal behavior may be more likely to use technology in a passive way because they are more practiced, more comfortable, or more engaged with others. Those who are less accurate perceivers of others’ nonverbal behavior may use technology more actively because they are more self-focused or find perceiving others to be more challenging or less rewarding. The correlational nature of the current studies does not allow us to untangle the direction of these effects. Therefore, we urge future work to consider experimental designs to examine the causal relationship between technology use and communication ability, particularly nonverbal decoding skill.

While experimental designs on this topic are rare, we are aware of one study that employed a quasi-experimental design to manipulate technology use. Age-matched cohorts of preteens attended a summer camp in a staggered order such that one group went earlier than the other group ( Uhls et al., 2014 ). While at camp, electronics including television, computers, and mobile phones were not allowed. The first group to attend camp was the experimental group ( N = 51) and the group that stayed at school while the first group was at camp was considered the control group ( N = 54). After just 5 days of interacting face-to-face without the use of any technology, preteens’ recognition of nonverbal emotion cues from photographs and videos (using the DANVA-2 Child and Adult Faces and the Child and Adolescent Social Perception Measure) was significantly greater compared to the control group. From this, we can gather that the short-term effects of increased opportunities for face-to-face interaction, combined with time away from screen-based media and digital communication, improved preteens’ understanding of and ability to decode nonverbal emotion cues.

Completely removing technology can be difficult in a real-world context; however, there are a variety of methods we propose to untangle the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill. There are applications and settings on most smartphones that display an alert when the user has reached a screen time maximum for the day. Researchers could consider a dose-response experiment in which they randomly assign different allowed hours of screen time to users each day for a series of days. One could then understand if different doses of screen time lead to higher or lower levels of nonverbal decoding skill.

In another potential research design, researchers could randomly assign the way technology is used by participants. Researchers could assign individuals as “passive users” who are not allowed to post but must read through others’ posts and/or photographs. Some questions to consider are whether or not this would facilitate practice, contribute to learning, and improve nonverbal decoding skill. Another quasi-experimental design could follow emerging adolescents with or without phones and assess differences in their nonverbal decoding skills, accounting for covariates and confounders such as gender, socioeconomic status, parents’ educational levels, and baseline communication skills.

In addition to experimentally manipulating technology use, research could examine and potentially rule out the reverse causality claim that nonverbal decoding skill is driving technology use. To do this, researchers could train participants on nonverbal decoding skill using validated trainings, such as the Geneva Emotion Recognition Test training (GERT; Schlegel et al., 2017b ), and then assess whether technology use changes over time or if training nonverbal decoding skill makes technology-mediated communication smoother or more rewarding.

As the use of technology-mediated communication continues to expand, it is crucial for psychological research to address the positive and negative consequences of technology use on communication skills, in particular nonverbal communication. The current research suggests that it may not be the technology use itself, but rather how actively or passively users engage with technology, that facilitates or hinders nonverbal decoding skill. We ultimately found support for all hypotheses (i.e., Liberated Relationship Perspective, Internet Enhanced Self Disclosure Hypothesis, Reduction Hypothesis, and Cues Filtered Out Theory) but the ways in which the hypotheses were supported depended on how users interacted with technology. Our results showed that those who use technology in a more passive way (reading and look at others’ posts) had higher nonverbal decoding accuracy. That is, more passive users may benefit from time online and learn skills to enhance their face-to-face communication (supporting the Liberated Relationship Perspective and Internet Enhanced Self Disclosure Hypothesis). For those who reported more active use (creating and posting their own content), they had lower nonverbal decoding accuracy. For these more active users, technology may have adverse effects on their ability to read and respond to others in face-to-face communication (supporting the Reduction Hypothesis and Cues Filtered Out Theory).

We believe these results to be encouraging, as some of the fears regarding the negative impact of technology on an individual’s communication skills may not come to fruition if technology is used in a more passive, observational manner rather than an active, self-focused manner. Beyond these results, we also provide researchers with suggestions to further the field of technology use and communication skills. Due to the growing diversity in technology-mediated communication platforms, we urge researchers to account for the different functions theses platforms afford users. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, we urge researchers to explore experimental designs to determine causal pathways in the complex relationship between technology and communication skills. Researchers are beginning to understand how the technological revolution is changing the ways in which humans navigate social interactions. A deeper appreciation for this complexity can lead to the development of interventions to enhance and not hinder our communication skills with the increasing presence and benefits of technology in our lives.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the University of Maine IRB. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

MR, MS, and JC contributed to conception, design of the study, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. MR organized the database and performed the statistical analysis. DB-H wrote sections of the manuscript. All authors contributed to manuscript revision, read, and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We thank research assistant, Vasiliqi Turlla, for her help in data collection and data cleaning and Herbert Ruben for always asking what technology was doing to our communication skills.

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Ielts exam preparation for a higher band score., ielts essay – impact of technology on communication.

IELTS Essay:

Topic: Impact of technology on communication. (Advantages & Disadvantages).

Sample Answer: It is a true fact to consider that in the present day the world has become a global village. As a result technology has main impact to the contemporary world. Considering this, some analysts consider the positive impacts of technology on our communication while others shows the negative aspects of it. However, there are some pros and cons behind implementation of said proposal.

There are some significant advantages of the influences of technology on communication and time saving could be a significant fact to be considered. It is generally seen that few decades ago people used to send letters to exchange a few words and ideas with others and waited a long time to get reply from them. However, as the development of technology people use modern equipment for communication to each other. For example, telephone, mobile phones, internet and e-mails etc.  Moreover, building relationship easily and across the boundary with each other may be another merit of the technological advancement. Therefore, people are not getting alone anymore because closed families and friends get chance to find out their loved ones.

Despite, the advantages pointed out above regarding immense benefit of communication, there are some disadvantages that cannot be neglected without any careful consideration. Unstable cyber relationships could be a detrimental fact. It may be defined as that nowadays social media has brought people together and made new relationships possible. As result some relationships led to many crimes For instance, internet frauds, lying deceiving have become very common nowadays.

In the end, undoubtedly, whether communication is good or bad to the society is a matter of discussion; however, as far as I am concern communication has enormous benefits to the contemporary world and it outweighs certain drawbacks. The way we live our life could not have been possible without the blessing of the modern technology and communications.

[ Written by – Thilini Shani ]

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Home — Essay Samples — Information Science and Technology — Impact of Technology — The Impact of Technology on Communication

The Impact of Technology on Communication

• Categories: Impact of Technology

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Published: Feb 7, 2024

Words: 621 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, marc’s argument, carly’s argument, synthesis of marc and carly’s arguments.

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Essay on Communication Technology

Students are often asked to write an essay on Communication Technology in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Communication Technology

What is communication technology.

Communication technology is how we send or get messages. Think of phones, computers, and the internet. These tools let us talk to people far away, share pictures, and work together, even if we’re in different places.

Changes Over Time

Long ago, people used letters, which were slow. Then came telephones, faster and easier. Now, smartphones and the internet let us chat instantly, anytime, making the world feel smaller and keeping us close to those we care about.

Benefits in Education

For students, communication technology means learning can happen anywhere. You can watch lessons online, join video calls with teachers, and get help from friends, all thanks to these amazing tools.

Staying Safe Online

While using these technologies, it’s important to stay safe. Keep personal information private, and be kind online. Remember, the internet is a public place, so always think before you share something.

Also check:

• Advantages and Disadvantages of Communication Technology

250 Words Essay on Communication Technology

Communication technology is all about the tools and systems we use to share information with each other. Like when you send a message on your phone or video chat with a friend who lives far away. It can be simple, like writing a letter, or fancy, like sending emails through the internet.

The Parts of Communication Technology

There are a few key parts to this technology. First, we have devices like phones, computers, and tablets. Next, there’s the internet, which is like a big web connecting all these devices. Then, we have the software, which are the programs that let us do things like send emails or make video calls.

Why It’s Important

This technology is super important because it makes talking to people easy and quick. You can send a message to someone on the other side of the world in just seconds! It helps us learn new things, do business, and stay in touch with family and friends.

Challenges and Future

Even though it’s really useful, there are some challenges too. Sometimes, people worry about privacy and how safe their information is online. Also, not everyone has access to these tools, which can be unfair.

In the future, we expect communication technology to get even better. We might see new ways to talk to each other and share information that we haven’t even thought of yet. It’s an exciting area that keeps growing and changing all the time.

500 Words Essay on Communication Technology

Communication technology is the way we share information using various tools and systems. In the past, people sent messages through letters or talked face to face. Today, we have many more options like email, social media, and smartphones. These tools let us talk to someone far away instantly.

The Role of the Internet

The internet has changed how we communicate. It is like a big web connecting computers all over the world. With the internet, we can send messages, pictures, and videos to our friends and family no matter where they are. We can also find information about anything we are curious about by searching online.

Mobile Phones and Smartphones

Mobile phones have made it very easy to talk to others. We can carry them in our pockets and call or text someone anytime. Smartphones are even better because they can do so many things. We can use them to go on the internet, take photos, and use apps that help us learn and play.

Social Media and Email

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram let us share our lives with others. We can post photos, tell people what we are doing, and chat. Email is another way we send messages. It is more private than social media and is often used for school or work.

Video Calls and Conferences

Sometimes we want to see the person we are talking to. Video calls let us do that. We can see and hear each other on our screens. This is great for talking to family who live far away or for meetings when people cannot be in the same room.

The Importance of Communication Technology

Communication technology is important because it keeps us connected. It helps us make new friends and stay in touch with old ones. It is also useful for learning. Students can watch educational videos, talk to their teachers online, and find lots of information for their homework.

Challenges and Safety

Even though communication technology is very helpful, it can also be tricky. Sometimes, it can be hard to tell if the information we find online is true. We also have to be careful about who we talk to and what we share. It is important to stay safe and protect our personal information.

Communication technology is a big part of our lives. It lets us talk to people, learn new things, and have fun. We should use it wisely and remember to stay safe online. As we grow up, new tools will come, and we will learn to use them to share and connect even more.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Communication Barriers
• Essay on Communication
• Essay on Communication And Globalization

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Communication Technology Essay

This Communication Technology Essay is about how relationships have been impacted. This is the question:

Nowadays, the way many people interact with each other has changed because of technology. 

In what ways has technology affected the types of relationships people make? 

Is this a positive or negative development?

Understanding the Task

You should be able to see that there are two parts that need to be answered:

The first part is about general effects and the second part is asking for your opinion about this. 

So it doesn't easily fit into an essay 'type'.

Don't worry about this. If you have learned to recognize different types of essay but you find one that does not seem to fit any, just focus on working out exactly what you are being asked. 

So in this one you have to brainstorm some ideas about the way relationships have changed. 

Stating your Opinion

For the second part you need to decide if it is positive or negative, or both. 

Choosing one side and writing about it is probably the simplest way to approach it. In other words:

• Body 1: The way relationships have changed
• Body 2: The negative impacts (or positive)

Although it says ' positive or negative ', it's YOUR opinion, so if you decide it is both it is fine to say this as long as you  make it clear . 

In this model Communication Technology Essay, the writer has stated that it is both positive and negative.

• Body 1: The way relationships have changed (positive)
• Body 2: The negative impacts

When you take a look at the model answer, you'll see the writer has discussed the new types of relationships and labelled them as positive, but then gone on to look at the negative sides.

There are usually several ways you can approach and organize an essay, not just one. As long as it is coherent and answers the question, that is fine. 

Now take a look at the model answer and the comments below. 

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

Nowadays the way many people interact with each other has changed because of technology. 

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own experience or knowledge.

Write at least 250 words.

Model Answer:

It is evident that technology has transformed the ways of communication and influenced relationships in a variety of ways. In my opinion, there are both positive and negative effects of this.

The principal way in which relationships have been affected is that they tend to be at a distance rather than face-to-face. The advent of the internet has made it easy for business owners to communicate across the world, with remote job opportunities one call away. Online educational programs are available for people residing in different countries, and it is no longer a dream to attend live classes from the comfortable environment of a home. Not only this, the social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have revolutionized relationships, be it making online friendships with people from other countries or staying in touch with loved ones. Based on this perspective, technology has influenced relationships in a positive way. 

However, despite these advances, the quality of interaction has significantly declined in several respects. If people are developing most of their relationships online, this means that they may also have less fact-to-face contact. This kind of contact on a personal level is important for human beings to feel wanted and a part of society. This may be a particular problem for children's social development as they used to be seen playing out on the streets but are now too often indoors. Technology can also mean people are detached from what is going on around them even when they are out, as can be seen by the many people staring into their mobile phones as they travel or walk around. 

In conclusion, technology has brought some positive development in the ways people interact with each other. However, there are also some negative impacts of technology on the types of relationships people make. 

(299 Words)

This Communication Technology Essay would get a good score for the following reasons.

It fully answers the question, setting out the way the types of relationships people make have changed (they tend to be ' online ') and then expanding on this by giving examples. 

A balanced opinion is also clearly explained, with the impacts in the first body paragraph seen to be positive, and the second body paragraph dedicated to explaining the negative points.

The essay is also clearly organised and coherent, with the opinion clearly stated and the body paragraphs clearly each focused on one central idea.

There is also good vocabulary used and good collocations. For example:

• advent of the internet
• remote job opportunities
• social platforms
• revolutionized relationships
• people are detached from 

The grammar shows accuracy and a wide range of structures are used. 

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More From Forbes

The role of technology in the evolution of communication.

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For as long as humans have been on this planet, we’ve invented forms of communication—from smoke signals and messenger pigeons to the telephone and email—that have constantly evolved how we interact with each other. 

One of the biggest developments in communication came in 1831 when the electric telegraph was invented. While post existed as a form of communication before this date, it was electrical engineering in the 19th century which had a revolutionary impact. 

Now, digital methods have superseded almost all other forms of communication, especially in business. I can’t remember the last time I hand wrote a letter, rather than an email at work, even my signature is digital these days. Picking up the phone is a rare occurrence too—instead, I FaceTime, Zoom, or join a Google Hangout. 

When I look back at how communication has advanced over the years, it really is quite incredible…

The Telephone 

In 1849, the telephone was invented and within 50 years it was an essential item for homes and offices, but tethering impacted the flexibility and privacy of the device. Then, came the mobile phone. In 1973, Motorola created a mobile phone which kick-started a chain of developments that transformed communication forever. 

Early smartphones were primarily aimed towards the enterprise market, bridging the gap between telephones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), but they were bulky and had short battery lives. By 1996, Nokia was releasing phones with QWERTY keyboards and by 2010, the majority of Android phones were touchscreen-only. 

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In 2007, Steve Jobs revealed the first iPhone to the world and Apple paved the way for the aesthetics of modern smartphones. Before the iPhone, “flip phones”, and phones with a split keyboard and screen were the norm. A year later, a central application store with an initial 500 downloadable ‘apps’ was launched. Currently, there are over two million apps available in the Apple App Store. 

The Internet 

Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has had a revolutionary impact on communication, including the rise of near-instant communication by electronic mail, instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone calls, two-way interactive video calls, discussion forums, blogs, and social networking. 

The internet has made communication easier and faster, it’s allowed us to stay in contact with people regardless of time and location. It’s accelerated the pace of business and widened the possibilities within the enterprise space. It’s allowed people to find their voice and express themselves through social media, YouTube and memes. The internet has connected and divided us like nothing before. 

As a byproduct of the World Wide Web, email was introduced to the world in 1991 (although it had been operating years before) and it has vastly changed our lives—whether for better or worse depends on your viewpoint. The first users of the messaging platform were educational systems and the military who used email to exchange information. In 2018, there were more than 3.8 billion email users —that’s more than half the planet. By 2022, it’s expected that we will be sending 333 billion personal and business emails each day. 

While email is invaluable and we can’t imagine a world without it, there are tools that are springing up that are giving email a run for its money. Take Slack (an acronym for “Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge”) for example, the company which launched in 2014 has often been described as an email killer . However, while Slack has become the most popular chat and productivity tool in the world used by 10 million people every day, email is still going strong. In recognition of this, Slack’s upgrades have ensured that people who still rely heavily on email are not excluded from collaboratory work. 

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Wearable Technology 

The first instance of wearable technology was a handsfree mobile headset launched in 1999 , which became a piece of tech synonymous with city workers. It gave businesspeople the ability to answer calls on the go, most importantly, while driving.

Ten years ago, the idea that you could make a video call from an item other than a phone would have been a sci-fi dream. Now, with smartwatches, audio sunglasses, and other emerging wearable technology, these capabilities are a part of our daily lives. 

Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash

Virtual Reality (VR) 

The next generation of VR has only been around since 2016, but it’s already shaking up communications. The beauty of VR— presence —means you can connect to someone in the same space at the same time, without the time sink and cost of travel, even if participants are on different continents. 

VR also helps to facilitate better communication. In a typical discussion, a lot of information is non-verbal communication which can be transcribed in VR. Voice tone, hesitations, head and hand movements greatly improve the understanding of the participants' emotions and intents. Plus in VR, all distractions are removed and people can be fully focused on what is happening around them. In fact, MeetinVR claims that there is a 25% increase in attention span when meeting in virtual reality compared to video conferencing. 

In addition, research suggests we retain more information and can better apply what we have learned after participating in virtual reality. 3D is a natural communication language overcoming linguistic barriers as well as technical jargon. 

5G, the 5th generation of mobile network, promises much faster data download and upload speeds, wider coverage, and more stable connections. These benefits will bring about significant improvements in communication. Instantaneous communication will be possible and those patchy frustrating video calls will be a thing of the past. 

The average 4G transmission speed currently available for our smartphones is around the 21 Mbps mark. 5G will be 100 to 1000 times faster. The Consumer Technology Association notes that at this speed, you could download a two-hour movie in just 3.6 seconds, versus 6 minutes on 4G or 26 hours on 3G. The impact of 5G will go far beyond our smartphones as it will allow millions of devices to be connected simultaneously. 

Looking ahead, there is already buzz about 6G . Although it’s still in basic research and around 15-20 years away, it’s interesting from an innovation point of view. 6G will form the framework of the connected utopia we aspire towards, and with it will come untold improvements in the speed and consistency of our communication. 

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ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN THE USE OF INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICTs) IN EDUCATION Esoswo

ICT has given rise to a host of legal and ethical issues and challenges in the use of ICT for education. Pre-service and in-service teachers as well as students need to know to a reasonable extent about the issues and challenges in the use of ICT for education. As teachers or potential teachers and students, they need to be above reproach. Teachers and students should understand the basic issues (effectiveness, cost, equity, and sustainability,), as well as the challenges (infrastructure related challenges, capacity building challenges, challenges related to financing the cost of ICT use, to mention but few) surrounding the use of ICT in education and then apply those issues as principles in practice.

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Feb 13, 2023

200-500 Word Example Essays about Technology

Got an essay assignment about technology check out these examples to inspire you.

Technology is a rapidly evolving field that has completely changed the way we live, work, and interact with one another. Technology has profoundly impacted our daily lives, from how we communicate with friends and family to how we access information and complete tasks. As a result, it's no surprise that technology is a popular topic for students writing essays.

But writing a technology essay can be challenging, especially for those needing more time or help with writer's block. This is where Jenni.ai comes in. Jenni.ai is an innovative AI tool explicitly designed for students who need help writing essays. With Jenni.ai, students can quickly and easily generate essays on various topics, including technology.

This blog post aims to provide readers with various example essays on technology, all generated by Jenni.ai. These essays will be a valuable resource for students looking for inspiration or guidance as they work on their essays. By reading through these example essays, students can better understand how technology can be approached and discussed in an essay.

Moreover, by signing up for a free trial with Jenni.ai, students can take advantage of this innovative tool and receive even more support as they work on their essays. Jenni.ai is designed to help students write essays faster and more efficiently, so they can focus on what truly matters – learning and growing as a student. Whether you're a student who is struggling with writer's block or simply looking for a convenient way to generate essays on a wide range of topics, Jenni.ai is the perfect solution.

The Impact of Technology on Society and Culture

Introduction:.

Technology has become an integral part of our daily lives and has dramatically impacted how we interact, communicate, and carry out various activities. Technological advancements have brought positive and negative changes to society and culture. In this article, we will explore the impact of technology on society and culture and how it has influenced different aspects of our lives.

Positive impact on communication:

Technology has dramatically improved communication and made it easier for people to connect from anywhere in the world. Social media platforms, instant messaging, and video conferencing have brought people closer, bridging geographical distances and cultural differences. This has made it easier for people to share information, exchange ideas, and collaborate on projects.

Positive impact on education:

Students and instructors now have access to a multitude of knowledge and resources because of the effect of technology on education . Students may now study at their speed and from any location thanks to online learning platforms, educational applications, and digital textbooks.

Negative impact on critical thinking and creativity:

Technological advancements have resulted in a reduction in critical thinking and creativity. With so much information at our fingertips, individuals have become more passive in their learning, relying on the internet for solutions rather than logic and inventiveness. As a result, independent thinking and problem-solving abilities have declined.

Positive impact on entertainment:

Technology has transformed how we access and consume entertainment. People may now access a wide range of entertainment alternatives from the comfort of their own homes thanks to streaming services, gaming platforms, and online content makers. The entertainment business has entered a new age of creativity and invention as a result of this.

Negative impact on attention span:

However, the continual bombardment of information and technological stimulation has also reduced attention span and the capacity to focus. People are easily distracted and need help focusing on a single activity for a long time. This has hampered productivity and the ability to accomplish duties.

The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies has been one of the most significant technological developments of the past several decades. These cutting-edge technologies have the potential to alter several sectors of society, including commerce, industry, healthcare, and entertainment. 

As with any new and quickly advancing technology, AI and ML ethics must be carefully studied. The usage of these technologies presents significant concerns around privacy, accountability, and command. As the use of AI and ML grows more ubiquitous, we must assess their possible influence on society and investigate the ethical issues that must be taken into account as these technologies continue to develop.

What are Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning?

Artificial Intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence in machines designed to think and act like humans. Machine learning is a subfield of AI that enables computers to learn from data and improve their performance over time without being explicitly programmed.

The impact of AI and ML on Society

The use of AI and ML in various industries, such as healthcare, finance, and retail, has brought many benefits. For example, AI-powered medical diagnosis systems can identify diseases faster and more accurately than human doctors. However, there are also concerns about job displacement and the potential for AI to perpetuate societal biases.

The Ethical Considerations of AI and ML

A. Bias in AI algorithms

One of the critical ethical concerns about AI and ML is the potential for algorithms to perpetuate existing biases. This can occur if the data used to train these algorithms reflects the preferences of the people who created it. As a result, AI systems can perpetuate these biases and discriminate against certain groups of people.

B. Responsibility for AI-generated decisions

Another ethical concern is the responsibility for decisions made by AI systems. For example, who is responsible for the damage if a self-driving car causes an accident? The manufacturer of the vehicle, the software developer, or the AI algorithm itself?

C. The potential for misuse of AI and ML

AI and ML can also be used for malicious purposes, such as cyberattacks and misinformation. The need for more regulation and oversight in developing and using these technologies makes it difficult to prevent misuse.

The developments in AI and ML have given numerous benefits to humanity, but they also present significant ethical concerns that must be addressed. We must assess the repercussions of new technologies on society, implement methods to limit the associated dangers, and guarantee that they are utilized for the greater good. As AI and ML continue to play an ever-increasing role in our daily lives, we must engage in an open and frank discussion regarding their ethics.

The Future of Work And Automation

Rapid technological breakthroughs in recent years have brought about considerable changes in our way of life and work. Concerns regarding the influence of artificial intelligence and machine learning on the future of work and employment have increased alongside the development of these technologies. This article will examine the possible advantages and disadvantages of automation and its influence on the labor market, employees, and the economy.

The Advantages of Automation

Automation in the workplace offers various benefits, including higher efficiency and production, fewer mistakes, and enhanced precision. Automated processes may accomplish repetitive jobs quickly and precisely, allowing employees to concentrate on more complex and creative activities. Additionally, automation may save organizations money since it removes the need to pay for labor and minimizes the danger of workplace accidents.

The Potential Disadvantages of Automation

However, automation has significant disadvantages, including job loss and income stagnation. As robots and computers replace human labor in particular industries, there is a danger that many workers may lose their jobs, resulting in higher unemployment and more significant economic disparity. Moreover, if automation is not adequately regulated and managed, it might lead to stagnant wages and a deterioration in employees' standard of life.

The Future of Work and Automation

Despite these difficulties, automation will likely influence how labor is done. As a result, firms, employees, and governments must take early measures to solve possible issues and reap the rewards of automation. This might entail funding worker retraining programs, enhancing education and skill development, and implementing regulations that support equality and justice at work.

IV. The Need for Ethical Considerations

We must consider the ethical ramifications of automation and its effects on society as technology develops. The impact on employees and their rights, possible hazards to privacy and security, and the duty of corporations and governments to ensure that automation is utilized responsibly and ethically are all factors to be taken into account.

Conclusion:

To summarise, the future of employment and automation will most certainly be defined by a complex interaction of technological advances, economic trends, and cultural ideals. All stakeholders must work together to handle the problems and possibilities presented by automation and ensure that technology is employed to benefit society as a whole.

The Role of Technology in Education

Introduction.

Nearly every part of our lives has been transformed by technology, and education is no different. Today's students have greater access to knowledge, opportunities, and resources than ever before, and technology is becoming a more significant part of their educational experience. Technology is transforming how we think about education and creating new opportunities for learners of all ages, from online courses and virtual classrooms to instructional applications and augmented reality.

Technology's Benefits for Education

The capacity to tailor learning is one of technology's most significant benefits in education. Students may customize their education to meet their unique needs and interests since they can access online information and tools. 

For instance, people can enroll in online classes on topics they are interested in, get tailored feedback on their work, and engage in virtual discussions with peers and subject matter experts worldwide. As a result, pupils are better able to acquire and develop the abilities and information necessary for success.

Challenges and Concerns

Despite the numerous advantages of technology in education, there are also obstacles and considerations to consider. One issue is the growing reliance on technology and the possibility that pupils would become overly dependent on it. This might result in a lack of critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, as students may become passive learners who only follow instructions and rely on technology to complete their assignments.

Another obstacle is the digital divide between those who have access to technology and those who do not. This division can exacerbate the achievement gap between pupils and produce uneven educational and professional growth chances. To reduce these consequences, all students must have access to the technology and resources necessary for success.

In conclusion, technology is rapidly becoming an integral part of the classroom experience and has the potential to alter the way we learn radically. 

Technology can help students flourish and realize their full potential by giving them access to individualized instruction, tools, and opportunities. While the benefits of technology in the classroom are undeniable, it's crucial to be mindful of the risks and take precautions to guarantee that all kids have access to the tools they need to thrive.

The Influence of Technology On Personal Relationships And Communication 

Technological advancements have profoundly altered how individuals connect and exchange information. It has changed the world in many ways in only a few decades. Because of the rise of the internet and various social media sites, maintaining relationships with people from all walks of life is now simpler than ever. 

However, concerns about how these developments may affect interpersonal connections and dialogue are inevitable in an era of rapid technological growth. In this piece, we'll discuss how the prevalence of digital media has altered our interpersonal connections and the language we use to express ourselves.

Direct Effect on Direct Interaction:

The disruption of face-to-face communication is a particularly stark example of how technology has impacted human connections. The quality of interpersonal connections has suffered due to people's growing preference for digital over human communication. Technology has been demonstrated to reduce the usage of nonverbal signs such as facial expressions, tone of voice, and other indicators of emotional investment in the connection.

Positive Impact on Long-Distance Relationships:

Yet there are positives to be found as well. Long-distance relationships have also benefited from technological advancements. The development of technologies such as video conferencing, instant messaging, and social media has made it possible for individuals to keep in touch with distant loved ones. It has become simpler for individuals to stay in touch and feel connected despite geographical distance.

The Effects of Social Media on Personal Connections:

The widespread use of social media has had far-reaching consequences, especially on the quality of interpersonal interactions. Social media has positive and harmful effects on relationships since it allows people to keep in touch and share life's milestones.

Unfortunately, social media has made it all too easy to compare oneself to others, which may lead to emotions of jealousy and a general decline in confidence. Furthermore, social media might cause people to have inflated expectations of themselves and their relationships.

A Personal Perspective on the Intersection of Technology and Romance

Technological advancements have also altered physical touch and closeness. Virtual reality and other technologies have allowed people to feel physical contact and familiarity in a digital setting. This might be a promising breakthrough, but it has some potential downsides. 

Experts are concerned that people's growing dependence on technology for intimacy may lead to less time spent communicating face-to-face and less emphasis on physical contact, both of which are important for maintaining good relationships.

In conclusion, technological advancements have significantly affected the quality of interpersonal connections and the exchange of information. Even though technology has made it simpler to maintain personal relationships, it has chilled interpersonal interactions between people. 

Keeping tabs on how technology is changing our lives and making adjustments as necessary is essential as we move forward. Boundaries and prioritizing in-person conversation and physical touch in close relationships may help reduce the harm it causes.

The Security and Privacy Implications of Increased Technology Use and Data Collection

The fast development of technology over the past few decades has made its way into every aspect of our life. Technology has improved many facets of our life, from communication to commerce. However, significant privacy and security problems have emerged due to the broad adoption of technology. In this essay, we'll look at how the widespread use of technological solutions and the subsequent explosion in collected data affects our right to privacy and security.

Data Mining and Privacy Concerns

Risk of Cyber Attacks and Data Loss

The Widespread Use of Encryption and Other Safety Mechanisms

The Privacy and Security of the Future in a Globalized Information Age

Obtaining and Using Individual Information

The acquisition and use of private information is a significant cause for privacy alarm in the digital age. Data about their customers' online habits, interests, and personal information is a valuable commodity for many internet firms. Besides tailored advertising, this information may be used for other, less desirable things like identity theft or cyber assaults.

Moreover, many individuals need to be made aware of what data is being gathered from them or how it is being utilized because of the lack of transparency around gathering personal information. Privacy and data security have become increasingly contentious as a result.

Data breaches and other forms of cyber-attack pose a severe risk.

The risk of cyber assaults and data breaches is another big issue of worry. More people are using more devices, which means more opportunities for cybercriminals to steal private information like credit card numbers and other identifying data. This may cause monetary damages and harm one's reputation or identity.

Many high-profile data breaches have occurred in recent years, exposing the personal information of millions of individuals and raising serious concerns about the safety of this information. Companies and governments have responded to this problem by adopting new security methods like encryption and multi-factor authentication.

Many businesses now use encryption and other security measures to protect themselves from cybercriminals and data thieves. Encryption keeps sensitive information hidden by encoding it so that only those possessing the corresponding key can decipher it. This prevents private information like bank account numbers or social security numbers from falling into the wrong hands.

Firewalls, virus scanners, and two-factor authentication are all additional security precautions that may be used with encryption. While these safeguards do much to stave against cyber assaults, they are not entirely impregnable, and data breaches are still possible.

The Future of Privacy and Security in a Technologically Advanced World

There's little doubt that concerns about privacy and security will persist even as technology improves. There must be strict safeguards to secure people's private information as more and more of it is transferred and kept digitally. To achieve this goal, it may be necessary to implement novel technologies and heightened levels of protection and to revise the rules and regulations regulating the collection and storage of private information.

Individuals and businesses are understandably concerned about the security and privacy consequences of widespread technological use and data collecting. There are numerous obstacles to overcome in a society where technology plays an increasingly important role, from acquiring and using personal data to the risk of cyber-attacks and data breaches. Companies and governments must keep spending money on security measures and working to educate people about the significance of privacy and security if personal data is to remain safe.

In conclusion, technology has profoundly impacted virtually every aspect of our lives, including society and culture, ethics, work, education, personal relationships, and security and privacy. The rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning has presented new ethical considerations, while automation is transforming the future of work. 

In education, technology has revolutionized the way we learn and access information. At the same time, our dependence on technology has brought new challenges in terms of personal relationships, communication, security, and privacy.

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About 1 in 5 U.S. teens who’ve heard of ChatGPT have used it for schoolwork

Roughly one-in-five teenagers who have heard of ChatGPT say they have used it to help them do their schoolwork, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17. With a majority of teens having heard of ChatGPT, that amounts to 13% of all U.S. teens who have used the generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot in their schoolwork.

Teens in higher grade levels are particularly likely to have used the chatbot to help them with schoolwork. About one-quarter of 11th and 12th graders who have heard of ChatGPT say they have done this. This share drops to 17% among 9th and 10th graders and 12% among 7th and 8th graders.

There is no significant difference between teen boys and girls who have used ChatGPT in this way.

The introduction of ChatGPT last year has led to much discussion about its role in schools , especially whether schools should integrate the new technology into the classroom or ban it .

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand American teens’ use and understanding of ChatGPT in the school setting.

The Center conducted an online survey of 1,453 U.S. teens from Sept. 26 to Oct. 23, 2023, via Ipsos. Ipsos recruited the teens via their parents, who were part of its KnowledgePanel . The KnowledgePanel is a probability-based web panel recruited primarily through national, random sampling of residential addresses. The survey was weighted to be representative of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 who live with their parents by age, gender, race and ethnicity, household income, and other categories.

This research was reviewed and approved by an external institutional review board (IRB), Advarra, an independent committee of experts specializing in helping to protect the rights of research participants.

Here are the  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its  methodology .

Teens’ awareness of ChatGPT

Overall, two-thirds of U.S. teens say they have heard of ChatGPT, including 23% who have heard a lot about it. But awareness varies by race and ethnicity, as well as by household income:

• 72% of White teens say they’ve heard at least a little about ChatGPT, compared with 63% of Hispanic teens and 56% of Black teens.
• 75% of teens living in households that make $75,000 or more annually have heard of ChatGPT. Much smaller shares in households with incomes between $30,000 and $74,999 (58%) and less than $30,000 (41%) say the same.

Teens who are more aware of ChatGPT are more likely to use it for schoolwork. Roughly a third of teens who have heard a lot about ChatGPT (36%) have used it for schoolwork, far higher than the 10% among those who have heard a little about it.

When do teens think it’s OK for students to use ChatGPT?

For teens, whether it is – or is not – acceptable for students to use ChatGPT depends on what it is being used for.

There is a fair amount of support for using the chatbot to explore a topic. Roughly seven-in-ten teens who have heard of ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use when they are researching something new, while 13% say it is not acceptable.

However, there is much less support for using ChatGPT to do the work itself. Just one-in-five teens who have heard of ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use it to write essays, while 57% say it is not acceptable. And 39% say it’s acceptable to use ChatGPT to solve math problems, while a similar share of teens (36%) say it’s not acceptable.

Some teens are uncertain about whether it’s acceptable to use ChatGPT for these tasks. Between 18% and 24% say they aren’t sure whether these are acceptable use cases for ChatGPT.

Those who have heard a lot about ChatGPT are more likely than those who have only heard a little about it to say it’s acceptable to use the chatbot to research topics, solve math problems and write essays. For instance, 54% of teens who have heard a lot about ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use it to solve math problems, compared with 32% among those who have heard a little about it.

Note: Here are the  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its  methodology .

• Artificial Intelligence
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Olivia Sidoti is a research assistant focusing on internet and technology research at Pew Research Center

Jeffrey Gottfried is an associate director focusing on internet and technology research at Pew Research Center

Many Americans think generative AI programs should credit the sources they rely on

Americans’ use of chatgpt is ticking up, but few trust its election information, q&a: how we used large language models to identify guests on popular podcasts, striking findings from 2023, what the data says about americans’ views of artificial intelligence, most popular.

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Regulating Wartime Artificial Intelligence

Gianna hill.

Scholar analyzes potential strategies to regulate wartime use of artificial intelligence.

No longer confined to the realm of science fiction, militarized artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving into warfare. How should international regulators respond?

In a recent paper , Mark Klamberg , a professor at Stockholm University , examines three methods of regulating the use of AI in military operations at the international level. Klamberg suggests that regulators should step up their oversight by using the current international humanitarian law framework, adding AI-specific regulations to existing rules, or developing a new system of regulation altogether.

Militarized AI is not new. Under the Obama Administration, the United States expanded the use of drones. Drones are an example of narrow AI which is AI designed to perform a single task.

The prevalence of sophisticated narrow AI which supports human decision making has increased , as seen in the war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian armed forces developed an Android application to reduce the time spent on targeting artillery. Its algorithm directs human operators to fire at opponents.

But general AI—which performs tasks as well as or better than humans—stands to upend the way war is done. Klamberg argues that the combination of narrow and general AI will increase the speed of warfare and enable quick and efficient decision making in military organizations.

Klamberg explains that current international regulatory efforts have been limited and focus on lethal autonomous weapons systems. The U.S. Department of Defense defines these weapons systems as systems that “select and engage targets” without further human intervention.

But Klamberg suggests that it is misleading to use the term “autonomous” in the context of these weapons systems.

Lethal autonomous weapons systems still incorporate humans either through direct control, supervision, or development of the system, so lethal autonomous weapons systems may still comport with international humanitarian law principles. As the International Committee of the Red Cross explains , the person who had “meaningful human control” over the system is accountable for that weapon.

Because mechanisms to regulate lethal autonomous weapons systems exist, Klamberg instead emphasizes the regulation of AI in military command and control systems. These systems are the organizations of personnel communication and coordination used to accomplish a given military goal.

AI in this context offers many benefits, including improving the accuracy, speed, and scale of decision-making in complex environments in a cost-effective manner.

Klamberg explains that this use of AI may lift the uncertainty of the “fog of war” that results from inefficient communication and information in a military operation. AI technology could connect soldiers and commanders, promoting efficient communication at even the lowest tiers of command.

The use of AI in military command and control systems, however, also poses challenges that regulators should address. Klamberg identifies concerns that the use of AI is more likely to endanger civilians, marks a loss of humanity, and may facilitate biased decision-making. AI may also increase the power asymmetry between nations, creating the potential for riskless warfare where one side is too advanced to fail.

Furthermore, the incorporation of AI into military command and control systems complicates how responsibility is allocated, Klamberg explains . Specifically, who is responsible for AI’s bad decisions? The software programmer, military commander, front-line operator, or even the political leader?

Klamberg identifies a concern that military personnel may be held responsible for the decisions of advanced autonomous systems even though they lack meaningful control over the system. Instead of pinning blame on low-level operators, Klamberg suggests that those overseeing any disciplinary process focus on supervisors and those with more control over the system.

Challengers to militarized AI, also called “abolitionists,” warn against the use of the technology altogether given these risks.

The complexity and rapid development of these technologies makes their regulation at the international level difficult. But the task is a worthwhile endeavor based on Klamberg’s premise that warring nations do not have an unlimited right to injure their enemy.

Klamberg outlines three methods of regulating militarized AI.

Klamberg suggests applying existing rules and principles of international humanitarian law to militarized AI. International humanitarian law is founded on the moral principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution.

The principle of distinction requires that warring actors distinguish between civilians and combatants. Proportionality entails weighing the cost of harm to civilians against the military advantage of an attack, and the principle of precaution includes taking other measures before an attack to mitigate its adverse effects.

Klamberg claims that these three principles can be programmed into militarized AI and would serve as a regulatory check on the technology. For instance, the principles of distinction and proportionality could be reduced to a formulaic calculation that enables the AI to separate civilians from combatants before executing any action.

To incorporate these principles into AI, Klamberg proposes involving human oversight in AI decisions. Klamberg explains that continuous assessment of the formulas programmed into the AI would serve as reassurance that the AI is acting according to accepted moral principles.

In addition, Klamberg proposes new AI-specific regulation that adds to existing rules, such as the military’s current rules of engagement. These rules are the internal policies that delineate the circumstances under which a military organization will engage in combat.

Klamberg proposes that militarized AI may be constrained through programming which incorporates the rules of engagement. Such programming would either restrict or permit the AI to deploy its weapons consistent with the rules. Klamberg suggests that this ethical programming could become part of the rules of engagement.

Ultimately, Klamberg imagines possible new frameworks for governing militarized AI.

One possibility involves implementing an arms control or trade regime to prevent an AI arms race, such as have been used to control nuclear arms races. As international agreements, arms control and trade regimes disallow the production and sale of certain weapons.

Some of the leading robotics companies have pledged not to weaponize their creations, but Klamberg suggests that these pledges have left companies working with the U.S. Department of Defense noticeable wiggle room. Instead of relying on voluntary pledges, Klamberg calls for the creation of a binding international treaty among countries.

Another possibility includes introducing new regulations governing the methods of AI warfare developed by international bodies in compliance with the Geneva Conventions. But these regulations may be too slow to be effective and may not take into account the development of AI, cautions Klamberg.

Whatever step is taken next, Klamberg suggests it should support an international regulatory framework that adapts to the future challenges of militarized AI.

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Resource date: 18 Apr 2024

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6 Common Leadership Styles — and How to Decide Which to Use When

• Rebecca Knight

Being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances call for different approaches.

Research suggests that the most effective leaders adapt their style to different circumstances — be it a change in setting, a shift in organizational dynamics, or a turn in the business cycle. But what if you feel like you’re not equipped to take on a new and different leadership style — let alone more than one? In this article, the author outlines the six leadership styles Daniel Goleman first introduced in his 2000 HBR article, “Leadership That Gets Results,” and explains when to use each one. The good news is that personality is not destiny. Even if you’re naturally introverted or you tend to be driven by data and analysis rather than emotion, you can still learn how to adapt different leadership styles to organize, motivate, and direct your team.

Much has been written about common leadership styles and how to identify the right style for you, whether it’s transactional or transformational, bureaucratic or laissez-faire. But according to Daniel Goleman, a psychologist best known for his work on emotional intelligence, “Being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances may call for different approaches.”

• RK Rebecca Knight is a journalist who writes about all things related to the changing nature of careers and the workplace. Her essays and reported stories have been featured in The Boston Globe, Business Insider, The New York Times, BBC, and The Christian Science Monitor. She was shortlisted as a Reuters Institute Fellow at Oxford University in 2023. Earlier in her career, she spent a decade as an editor and reporter at the Financial Times in New York, London, and Boston.

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Technology rules approved in football

Automatic timeouts to occur in the last 2 minutes of the 2nd and 4th quarters.

Optional technology rules in football, effective for the 2024 season, were approved by the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel on Thursday.

In games involving Football Bowl Subdivision teams, each school will have the option to use coach-to-player communications through the helmet to one player on the field. That player will be identified by having a green dot on the back midline of the player's helmet.

The communication from the coach to the player will be turned off with 15 seconds remaining on the play clock or when the ball is snapped, whichever comes first.

For all three divisions, teams have the option of using tablets to view in-game video only. The video can include the broadcast feed and camera angles from the coach's sideline and coach's end zone.

Teams can have up to 18 active tablets for use in the coaching booth, sideline and locker room. Tablets cannot be connected to other devices to project larger additional images and cannot include analytics, data or data access capability or other communication access. All team personnel will be allowed to view the tablets during the game. 

The Football Rules Committee, which met the last week of February, had a thorough discussion regarding wearable technologies.

The committee invites non-FBS conferences that are interested in using wearable technologies to submit an experimental proposal to the committee. Any proposals must be made to the committee by June 15. 

Two-minute timeout

The panel approved adding an automatic timeout when two minutes remain in the second and fourth quarters. 

This rules change synchronizes all timing rules, such as 10-second runoffs and stopping the clock when a first down is gained in bounds, which coincides with the two-minute timeout.

First-down timing rules

After a year of review, Division III committee members decided to adopt the timing rules where the game clock would continue to run when a first down is gained in bounds. The game clock will stop when a first down is gained during the last two minutes of either half. Division I and II schools used this timing rule last season. 

Other rules changes  

• Allowing conferences the option of using a collaborative replay review system. This will be formally added to the rules book; it had been an experimental rule.
• Penalizing horse-collar tackles that occur within the tackle box as a 15-yard personal foul. Previously, a horse-collar tackle within the tackle box was not a foul.

Additionally, head coaches can conduct interviews with broadcast partners after the first and third quarters. This was allowed on an experimental basis last season and will be added as a permanent rule. 

The panel did not support a uniform rule proposal made by the Football Rules Committee. Panel members were not comfortable with on-field officials having to enforce the recommended rule. 

The panel understands the rules committee's concern but encourages the committee to look for an administrative solution that does not include game official enforcement.

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How Technology Affects Our Lives – Essay

Do you wish to explore the use of information technology in daily life? Essays like the one below discuss this topic in depth. Read on to find out more.

Introduction

Technology in communication, technology in healthcare, technology in government, technology in education, technology in business, negative impact of technology.

Technology is a vital component of life in the modern world. People are so dependent on technology that they cannot live without it. Technology is important and useful in all areas of human life today. It has made life easy and comfortable by making communication and transport faster and easier (Harrington, 2011, p.35).

It has made education accessible to all and has improved healthcare services. Technology has made the world smaller and a better place to live. Without technology, fulfilling human needs would be a difficult task. Before the advent of technology, human beings were still fulfilling their needs. However, with technology, fulfillment of needs has become easier and faster.

It is unimaginable how life would be without technology. Technology is useful in the following areas: transport, communication, interaction, education, healthcare, and business (Harrington, 2011, p.35). Despite its benefits, technology has negative impacts on society. Examples of negative impacts of technology include the development of controversial medical practices such as stem cell research and the embracement of solitude due to changes in interaction methods. For example, social media has changed the way people interact.

Technology has led to the introduction of cloning, which is highly controversial because of its ethical and moral implications. The growth of technology has changed the world significantly and has influenced life in a great way. Technology is changing every day and continuing to influence areas of communication, healthcare, governance, education, and business.

Technology has contributed fundamentally in improving people’s lifestyles. It has improved communication by incorporating the Internet and devices such as mobile phones into people’s lives. The first technological invention to have an impact on communication was the discovery of the telephone by Graham Bell in 1875.

Since then, other inventions such as the Internet and the mobile phone have made communication faster and easier. For example, the Internet has improved ways through which people exchange views, opinions, and ideas through online discussions (Harrington, 2011, p.38). Unlike in the past when people who were in different geographical regions could not easily communicate, technology has eradicated that communication barrier. People in different geographical regions can send and receive messages within seconds.

Online discussions have made it easy for people to keep in touch. In addition, they have made socializing easy. Through online discussions, people find better solutions to problems by exchanging opinions and ideas (Harrington, 2011, p.39). Examples of technological inventions that facilitate online discussions include emails, online forums, dating websites, and social media sites.

Another technological invention that changed communication was the mobile phone. In the past, people relied on letters to send messages to people who were far away. Mobile phones have made communication efficient and reliable. They facilitate both local and international communication.

In addition, they enable people to respond to emergencies and other situations that require quick responses. Other uses of cell phones include the transfer of data through applications such as infrared and Bluetooth, entertainment, and their use as miniature personal computers (Harrington, 2011, p.40).

The latest versions of mobile phones are fitted with applications that enable them to access the Internet. This provides loads of information in diverse fields for mobile phone users. For business owners, mobile phones enhance the efficiency of their business operations because they are able to keep in touch with their employees and suppliers (Harrington, 2011, p.41). In addition, they are able to receive any information about the progress of their business in a short period of time.

Technology has contributed significantly to the healthcare sector. For example, it has made vital contributions in the fields of disease prevention and health promotion. Technology has aided in the understanding of the pathophysiology of diseases, which has led to the prevention of many diseases. For example, understanding the pathophysiology of the gastrointestinal tract and blood diseases has aided in their effective management (Harrington, 2011, p.49).

Technology has enabled practitioners in the medical field to make discoveries that have changed the healthcare sector. These include the discovery that peptic ulceration is caused by a bacterial infection and the development of drugs to treat schizophrenia and depressive disorders that afflict a greater portion of the population (Harrington, 2011, p.53). The development of vaccines against polio and measles led to their total eradication.

Children who are vaccinated against these diseases are not at risk of contracting the diseases. The development of vaccines was facilitated by technology, without which certain diseases would still be causing deaths in great numbers. Vaccines play a significant role in disease prevention.

Technology is used in health promotion in different ways. First, health practitioners use various technological methods to improve health care. eHealth refers to the use of information technology to improve healthcare by providing information on the Internet to people. In this field, technology is used in three main ways.

These include its use as an intervention tool, its use in conducting research studies, and its use for professional development (Lintonen et al, 2008, p. 560). According to Lintonenet al (2008), “e-health is the use of emerging information and communications technology, especially the internet, to improve or enable health and healthcare.” (p.560). It is largely used to support health care interventions that are mainly directed towards individual persons. Secondly, it is used to improve the well-being of patients during recovery.

Bedside technology has contributed significantly in helping patients recover. For example, medical professionals have started using the Xbox computer technology to develop a revolutionary process that measures limb movements in stroke patients (Tanja-Dijkstra, 2011, p.48). This helps them recover their manual competencies. The main aim of this technology is to help stroke patients do more exercises to increase their recovery rate and reduce the frequency of visits to the hospital (Lintonen et al, 2008, p. 560).

The government has utilized technology in two main areas. These include the facilitation of the delivery of citizen services and the improvement of defense and national security (Scholl, 2010, p.62). The government is spending large sums of money on wireless technologies, mobile gadgets, and technological applications. This is in an effort to improve their operations and ensure that the needs of citizens are fulfilled.

For example, in order to enhance safety and improve service delivery, Cisco developed a networking approach known as Connected Communities. This networking system connects citizens with the government and the community. The system was developed to improve the safety and security of citizens, improve service delivery by the government, empower citizens, and encourage economic development.

The government uses technology to provide information and services to citizens. This encourages economic development and fosters social inclusion (Scholl, 2010, p.62). Technology is also useful in improving national security and the safety of citizens. It integrates several wireless technologies and applications that make it easy for security agencies to access and share important information effectively. Technology is widely used by security agencies to reduce vulnerability to terrorism.

Technologically advanced gadgets are used in airports, hospitals, shopping malls, and public buildings to screen people for explosives and potentially dangerous materials or gadgets that may compromise the safety of citizens (Bonvillian and Sharp, 2001, par2). In addition, security agencies use surveillance systems to restrict access to certain areas. They also use technologically advanced screening and tracking methods to improve security in places that are prone to terrorist attacks (Bonvillian and Sharp, 2001, par3).

Technology has made significant contributions in the education sector. It is used to enhance teaching and learning through the use of different technological methods and resources. These include classrooms with digital tools such as computers that facilitate learning, online learning schools, blended learning, and a wide variety of online learning resources (Barnett, 1997, p.74). Digital learning tools that are used in classrooms facilitate learning in different ways. They expand the scope of learning materials and experiences for students, improve student participation in learning, make learning easier and quick, and reduce the cost of education (Barnett, 1997, p.75). For example, online schools and free learning materials reduce the costs that are incurred in purchasing learning materials. They are readily available online. In addition, they reduce the expenses that are incurred in program delivery.

Technology has improved the process of teaching by introducing new methods that facilitate connected teaching. These methods virtually connect teachers to their students. Teachers are able to provide learning materials and the course content to students effectively. In addition, teachers are able to give students an opportunity to personalize learning and access all learning materials that they provide. Technology enables teachers to serve the academic needs of different students.

In addition, it enhances learning because the problem of distance is eradicated, and students can contact their teachers easily (Barnett, 1997, p.76). Technology plays a significant role in changing how teachers teach. It enables educators to evaluate the learning abilities of different students in order to devise teaching methods that are most efficient in the achievement of learning objectives.

Through technology, teachers are able to relate well with their students, and they are able to help and guide them. Educators assume the role of coaches, advisors, and experts in their areas of teaching. Technology helps make teaching and learning enjoyable and gives it meaning that goes beyond the traditional classroom set-up system (Barnett, 1997, p.81).

Technology is used in the business world to improve efficiency and increase productivity. Most important, technology is used as a tool to foster innovation and creativity (Ray, 2004, p.62). Other benefits of technology to businesses include the reduction of injury risk to employees and improved competitiveness in the markets. For example, many manufacturing businesses use automated systems instead of manual systems. These systems eliminate the costs of hiring employees to oversee manufacturing processes.

They also increase productivity and improve the accuracy of the processes because of the reduction of errors (Ray, 2004, p.63). Technology improves productivity due to Computer-aided Manufacturing (CAM), Computer-integrated Manufacturing (CIM), and Computer-aided Design (CAD). CAM reduces labor costs, increases the speed of production, and ensures a higher level of accuracy (Hunt, 2008, p.44). CIM reduces labor costs, while CAD improves the quality and standards of products and reduces the cost of production.

Another example of the use of technology in improving productivity and output is the use of database systems to store data and information. Many businesses store their data and other information in database systems that make accessibility of information fast, easy, and reliable (Pages, 2010, p.44).

Technology has changed how international business is conducted. With the advent of e-commerce, businesses became able to trade through the Internet on the international market (Ray, 2004, p.69). This means that there is a large market for products and services. In addition, it implies that most markets are open 24 hours a day.

For example, customers can shop for books or music on Amazon.com at any time of the day. E-commerce has given businesses the opportunity to expand and operate internationally. Countries such as China and Brazil are taking advantage of opportunities presented by technology to grow their economy.

E-commerce reduces the complexities involved in conducting international trade (Ray, 2004, p.71). Its many components make international trade easy and fast. For example, a BOES system allows merchants to execute trade transactions in any language or currency, monitor all steps involved in transactions, and calculate all costs involved, such as taxes and freight costs (Yates, 2006, p.426).

Financial researchers claim that a BOES system is capable of reducing the cost of an international transaction by approximately 30% (Ray, 2004, p.74). BOES enables businesses to import and export different products through the Internet. This system of trade is efficient and creates a fair environment in which small and medium-sized companies can compete with large companies that dominate the market.

Despite its many benefits, technology has negative impacts. It has negative impacts on society because it affects communication and has changed the way people view social life. First, people have become more anti-social because of changes in methods of socializing (Harrington, 2008, p.103). Today, one does not need to interact physically with another person in order to establish a relationship.

The Internet is awash with dating sites that are full of people looking for partners and friends. The ease of forming friendships and relationships through the Internet has discouraged many people from engaging in traditional socializing activities. Secondly, technology has affected the economic statuses of many families because of high rates of unemployment. People lose jobs when organizations and businesses embrace technology (Harrington, 2008, p.105).

For example, many employees lose their jobs when manufacturing companies replace them with automated machines that are more efficient and cost-effective. Many families are struggling because of the lack of a constant stream of income. On the other hand, technology has led to the closure of certain companies because the world does not need their services. This is prompted by technological advancements.

For example, the invention of digital cameras forced Kodak to close down because people no longer needed analog cameras. Digital cameras replaced analog cameras because they are easy to use and efficient. Many people lost their jobs due to changes in technology. Thirdly, technology has made people lazy and unwilling to engage in strenuous activities (Harrington, 2008, p.113).

For example, video games have replaced physical activities that are vital in improving the health of young people. Children spend a lot of time watching television and playing video games such that they have little or no time for physical activities. This has encouraged the proliferation of unhealthy eating habits that lead to conditions such as diabetes.

Technology has elicited heated debates in the healthcare sector. Technology has led to medical practices such as stem cell research, implant embryos, and assisted reproduction. Even though these practices have been proven viable, they are highly criticized on the grounds of their moral implications on society.

There are many controversial medical technologies, such as gene therapy, pharmacogenomics, and stem cell research (Hunt, 2008, p.113). The use of genetic research in finding new cures for diseases is imperative and laudable. However, the medical implications of these disease treatment methods and the ethical and moral issues associated with the treatment methods are critical. Gene therapy is mostly rejected by religious people.

They claim that it is against natural law to alter the gene composition of a person in any way (Hunt, 2008, p.114). The use of embryonic stem cells in research is highly controversial, unlike the use of adult stem cells. The controversy exists because of the source of the stem cells. The cells are obtained from embryos. There is a belief among many people that life starts after conception.

Therefore, using embryos in research means killing them to obtain their cells for research. The use of embryo cells in research is considered in the same light as abortion: eliminating a life (Hunt, 2008, p.119). These issues have led to disagreements between the science and the religious worlds.

Technology is a vital component of life in the modern world. People are so dependent on technology that they cannot live without it. Technology is important and useful in all areas of human life today.

It has made life easy and comfortable by making communication faster and travel faster, making movements between places easier, making actions quick, and easing interactions. Technology is useful in the following areas of life: transport, communication, interaction, education, healthcare, and business. Despite its benefits, technology has negative impacts on society.

Technology has eased communication and transport. The discovery of the telephone and the later invention of the mobile phone changed the face of communication entirely. People in different geographical regions can communicate easily and in record time. In the field of health care, technology has made significant contributions in disease prevention and health promotion. The development of vaccines has eradicated certain diseases, and the use of the Internet is vital in promoting health and health care.

The government uses technology to enhance the delivery of services to citizens and the improvement of defense and security. In the education sector, teaching and learning processes have undergone significant changes owing to the impact of technology. Teachers are able to relate to different types of learners, and the learners have access to various resources and learning materials. Businesses benefit from technology through the reduction of costs and increased efficiency of business operations.

Despite the benefits, technology has certain disadvantages. It has negatively affected human interactions and socialization and has led to widespread unemployment. In addition, its application in the healthcare sector has elicited controversies due to certain medical practices such as stem cell research and gene therapy. Technology is very important and has made life easier and more comfortable than it was in the past.

Barnett, L. (1997). Using Technology in Teaching and Learning . New York: Routledge.

Bonvillian, W., and Sharp, K. (2011). Homeland Security Technology . Retrieved from https://issues.org/bonvillian/ .

Harrington, J. (2011). Technology and Society . New York: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Hunt, S. (2008). Controversies in Treatment Approaches: Gene Therapy, IVF, Stem Cells and Pharmagenomics. Nature Education , 19(1), 112-134.

Lintonen, P., Konu, A., and Seedhouse, D. (2008). Information Technology in Health Promotion. Health Education Research , 23(3), 560-566.

Pages, J., Bikifalvi, A., and De Castro Vila, R. (2010). The Use and Impact of Technology in Factory Environments: Evidence from a Survey of Manufacturing Industry in Spain. International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology , 47(1), 182-190.

Ray, R. (2004). Technology Solutions for Growing Businesses . New York: AMACOM Div American Management Association.

Scholl, H. (2010). E-government: Information, Technology and Transformation . New York: M.E. Sharpe.

Tanja-Dijkstra, K. (2011). The Impact of Bedside Technology on Patients’ Well-Being. Health Environments Research & Design Journal (HERD) , 5(1), 43-51.

Yates, J. (2006). How Business Enterprises use Technology: Extending the Demand-Side Turn. Enterprise and Society , 7(3), 422-425.

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "How Technology Affects Our Lives – Essay." August 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/technology-affecting-our-daily-life/.

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