TECHNOLOGY AND COMMUNICATION

Has Technology Changed the Way We

Communicate These Days?
Danitza Petricio
Pedagoga en Ingls
Universidad Catlica del Norte
Linguistics, Par. 1

Has Technology Changed the Way We Communicate These Days?

Technology is very important and necessary to society today. It is an indispensable
tool for humans (as long as you use for the benefit of humanity). Technology has allowed a
number of changes in everyday life because it transforms the environment according to
their own needs. The critical role of technology lies in the impact it generates. The role of
technology in contemporary society is to continue innovating for growth, improvement or
development as a society or country and also to have a better quality of life.
Humans are social beings, so it is important to learn how to get along with others
and to function properly in social situations. Certainly, communication skills help us
improve interpersonal relationships. This communication involves various elements that
may facilitate the process.

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Properly speaking, no one is communicating with a television or a computer but it is

a way of communication. Thats when we ask this question: is it only possible
communication between human beings? How does modern technology change human
communication?
According to Oxford dictionary, technology is the application of scientific
knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry: advances in computer
technology. And communication is the imparting or exchanging of information by
speaking, writing, or using some other medium
Technological advances have dramatically changed the way people communicate.
People have more ways to communicate than ever before, many of which operate at high
speeds and still provide instant communication between multiple people. The options and
accessibility of communication technology have changed the social habits and styles. Many
are concerned that though the amount of communication has increased, the quality may be
decreasing.
Some educators, scholars and scientists have expressed concern about the impact of
communications technology. They worry that the heavy use of electronic communications
such as email, social networking, text messaging, instant messaging and network video
games have reduced social skills of children and adults.
Our grandparents, today, begin to become familiar with the technology but earlier in
their adolescence they were not used to any of these things and the way they communicated
was completely different from today. Today, in a second you can communicate with almost
anywhere in the world, and nobody thought it would happen in the past.
Everything has both a positive and negative impact, and the technology impact on
the way we communicate also comes as mixed baggage.
Technology has enormously impacted communication, and transformed a big world
into a small global city. Technology has the power to let us communicate with anybody on

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the other side of the world. Communication is now easier. It has also made it easy to keep
in touch with people. In education terms, you can have your class in a website page and do
whatever your need. If you need something urgently, you just have to use your cell phone
or a social network to convey that. You can even find a relationship. Technology has made
everything easier, and that's really helpful for the modern society.
Despite all these benefits, technology also has brought negative impacts on the way
we communicate. Relationships today are impersonal. This means that the charm of the
good old world is missing. Face-to-face conversations and letters have gone away, and have
been replaced. The new generations have lack of interpersonal skills.
It has also affected family relationship because we can see now how families are so
distant, and they almost communicate. The older generations are not so actualized and not
used to the communication styles of their kids, and this has increased the generation gap.
The sad fact is that people are more bothered about their online life rather than the real
social life.
However, facial expressions and body language are not evident in technology. This
is something that technology cant reach yet. Nothing can replace face-to-face
conversations because you can be whoever you want behind a computer. Instead, in the
other way you can only be yourself.
There were an estimated 2,405,510,175 internet users worldwide, according to
Internet World Stats (June 30, 2012). Latin American leader in the use of social networks is
Chile, according to the consulting firm ComScore. The percentage of Internet users
estimated for Chile is 61.4%, according to World Bank (2012). The chart shows that nine
out of every 10 Chileans use social networks. This is related to the big access that Chileans
have to Internet because 7 millions of the South American country can access to the web
from work or home. Actually, Chile is the fourth country in the world in Facebook use.

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Social and cultural changes have come with technology and we have even changed
the way we speak. People often talk with slangs and jargon that have relation with the
technology that we are living today. Technology has changed how we live our day-to-day
lives. In the 1970s, people in Chile had face to face conversations. Cell phones didnt exist
and either the internet. There were a few people who have a computer or a TV in 1990s,
and people managed to communicate each other. Now, we even have everything to contact a
person we havent met. We have some internet words such as LOL (laugh out loud), TTYL (talk
to you later) and OMG (oh my gosh). The 1970s children didn't have these technological
advances; they always played outside or found another activity to keep them busy. This is
increasing the child's risk of obesity because people are sitting all day. In the past 20 years,
Technology has increased highly, and it's going to be intriguing to see how we communicate in
the future.

Conclusion
Technology has always fascinated the world, and new advances in technology have
helped shape the way people communicate with one another. Technological developments

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have changed the way we connect to others and we have adapted the rules of
communication to work with these changes. Technology has influenced society in all areas,
even in interpersonal relationships. It have reached advanced levels of progress in the area
of communications, especially among people who are in different parts of the world,
facilitating trade, economic, social or political among others. However, we are closer to the
people who are far from us and further away from those nearby.
Similarly, we have become able to express better by social networks than face to
face. There are people who spend more time improving the use of technological items than
the development of oral communication activities such as physical and even the use of
intelligence, originality and autonomy.
The rapid advancement of technology has enabled us to achieve incredible levels of
development. However, we must not let this "Technological Age" rule our lives because
that way, we become prototypes of the system.
When I am on my way to classes, I see a lot of students with their heads down
looking at a phone screen with their fingers moving at a furious pace. We are
communicating all the time, but is that the best way to communicate?
Technology advances is increasingly in our daily life. Internet, social networking,
connectivity and mobile devices lead to a connected world, which has created a major shift
in the way we interact and communicate. Within society, the way of relating between
people is increasingly impersonal and cold, and physical contact is decreasing. Much of this
is due to the growing influence of New Communication Technologies.

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Technology aims to people needs, but it affects face-to-face relationships with our
peers. It depends purely and exclusively of ourselves, we realize that a text message or an
e-mail, wouldnt replace the power of a spoken word.

References