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Elyse Gonzales
Professor Shamiryan
English 113B
26 February 2014
How our lives are damaged by the online world
A woman named Sherry Turkle during her TED speech states, Technology appeals to us
most when we are lonely and afraid on intimacy. It gives us an illusion of companionship
without the demands of friendship. We can put attention wherever we want, we can always be
heard, and we never have to be alone.(Is technology destroying..) She is saying how dependent
we are towards technology that it confuses us to what is even real in our world or not. Society
has changed so much in a sense that we use the online world as a way to escape from reality.
Applications and websites give us a satisfaction of doing things we dont feel comfortable doing
in person. Half the time peoples online lives are fake and keep us from the important things in
life. The online/digital world is damaging our lives by being the main substitute and distraction
to the actual lives we live. Relationships and friendships are ending or are involved in some sort
of drama because of the online world. Society has adapted to the online world so much that they
even create fake friends and relationships online rather than dealing with things in person. Our
lives are personally and socially damaged by the online world through personal relationships
such as significant others and friends, which causes us to create virtual relationships.
Technology is ruining marriages as well as relationships in general by distracting people
from each other and causing temptation to do deceiving things and to post about them. Divorce
rates have increased by technology alone over the years. Producers have made more devices and
applications that people can now use for communicating. Married people can use them in
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negative ways, which ends their relationship. Editor Brad Wilcox says, These techno-
distractions are at least one factor in the disintegration of civic engagement, and as a result, in the
quality and stability of marriages(qtd. Wilcox) Wilcox is explaining how technology has
become such a factor in relationships that it ruins the actual quality. Before, marriages would end
because of cheating or people just not working out for whatever reasons, but now it is partly
because the online world is too involved in peoples lives. Technology has grown so much on
people in their daily life that they loose focus on what is right in front of them. If people do not
want their marriages to be ruined by technology, then they should lower their activity on their
phones with social networks. Technology and its social world have not only ruined significant
relationships, but it has also made people less social with their friends.
The social world is used a lot for staying connected with friends. That was the main
purpose when the online world was created. It was created to keep people connected constantly
when they are away from each other. However, people tend to text and email to communicate
and catch up rather than seeing the people in person. By doing this, they change the purpose of
even being involved in the online world. When people miss their friends or mad at them, they go
to the social world to make a post to let them know what is going on rather than confronting
them. This is how problems start because by communicating online, people tend to have
miscommunications and do not understand exactly what each other is trying to say. In general
people have become so dependent on their social world that they do not care about leaving the
house to go and interact with their real friends that desire a face-to-face friendship. By being so
dependent on the social world and not going out into the real world, friendships tend to fade
away and end because of lack of effort. Social networks are an easy way out to say things that
they really do not want to say in person, or just a distraction from what is really going on around
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you. In an article it brings up a topic of phubbing. It asks, Are you guilty of phubbing? It's
the habit of snubbing those around you and staring at your smartphone instead of listening to
them. (Are smartphones..) Phubbing is just a new term to describe a way how to ignore the
person you are hanging out with. It is a way to avoid uncomfortable situations and to just tune a
person out when you are not in the mood to talk. If people do not want to hang out and would
rather ignore their friends when they do, then they should just stay home and be on their social
medias all day. The social media people use on their phones has changed who they are and their
manners towards people in negative ways.
If society chooses not to be social and hang out with people in person they tend to
communicate over what is known as the social world. People create new friends they have
never met and in some cases even new relationships. Today, especially in this generation, people
are meeting on the online world. They go to websites and or popular social applications to get to
know one another and create friendship/relationship. However, in some cases people make up
relationships and friendships that may be fake or effecting their life in a negative way. There is
an article that talks about what people use the online world and its advantages for. She states
that, John Adams, admitted that his main motivation for creating the site was to meet attractive
women.(Rosen 260) Adams is so dependent on the online world that he created a website to
meet women he feels he can not meet in person. Dates and hang outs used to happen by everyone
talking to each other and genuinely asking to hang out. Being shy was never an option because
there were not as many resources to help someone shy ask another person out in secret/via
online. By creating the website Adam made it easier for people to join the website and not have
to ask people out in person and save them the time and effort of being genuine. People need to
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get out of the house and interact with the relationships they already have. Lonely and anti social
people create an online life that becomes the whole basis of their life.
The online world has managed to damage marriages and relationships that people are in.
It has also turned people into being anti-social with their friends, and as a conclusion to both
consequences, it has created a bigger consequence and it got to the point of people only having
an online life. People have become more dependent to their online life rather than going out and
living their own. These are all just a few examples of how the online world has evolved society.
The online world has damaged our life and has affected almost every aspect in it, including who
we are.














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Work Cited
Goshgarian, Gary. The Contemporary Reader. 11th ed. New York: Longman, 1999.
Print.
"Is Technology Destroying Human Social Life?" Zazen Life. N.p., 29 May 2012. Web. 23
Feb. 2014.
Lee, Amy. "Technology And Divorce: A Correlation?" The Huffington Post.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, 09 Dec. 2010. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.
News, CBC. "Are Smartphones Making Us Anti-social? - Technology & Science - CBC
News." CBCnews. CBC/Radio Canada, 14 Oct. 2013. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.