DIRE DAWA UNIVERSITY

College of social science and humanities Department

of Psychology

Course name; Seminar in contemporary issues

Seminar Essay on; Dose technologies make us alone?

Name ID
1, Getachew Atalay.......................................R/3343/09

Advisor: - Mr. Mangistu

Submission Date: - June 17/20Dire

Dawa, Ethiopia, 201

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Table of content

1
Content page No

ACKNOWLEDGMENT............................................................................................................ii
Chapter one..................................................................................................................................1
1. Introduction..........................................................................................................................1
Chapter two..................................................................................................................................3
2. Literature review....................................................................................................................3
2.1..............................................................................................................................Definition
3
2.1.1.................................................................................................What is Social Media?
3
2.1.2.....................................................................................................What is Loneliness?
5
2.2.....................................................................................................Historical development
6
2.2.1. The Birth of Social Media......................................................................................6
2.3..........................................................................................................................Analysis one
9
2.3.1....................................................Internet Use, Social Networks and Loneliness:
9
2.3.2...................................................................................................Facebook Depression
9
2.4..........................................................................................................................Analysis two
10
2.4.1. Loneliness and Social Media...............................................................................10
2.5.................................................................................................................................Findings
11
2.6.................................................................................................................................Theories
12
2.9. Our claim ...................................................................................................................... 12
Chapter three .......................................................................................................................... 13
3. Social media and loneliness in our country....................................................................13
CONCLUSIONS ......................................................................................................................15
Recommendation......................................................................................................................16

2
References 17

1
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

First of all I

would like to

thank my

almighty God

who gives me

the courage

while working

on this Seminar

essay paper.

Next I would

like to express

my gratitude to

my advisor Mr.

Mangistu who

2
 gives me his

valuable and

constructive

advices for the

correction of

this paper. And I

have some

peoples besides,

the classmates

who helped me

while working

on this seminar

essay and the

University

3
 librarians who

serve me with

the reference

books and

internet access I

also want to

thank

them.CHAPTE

R ONE

Introduction
The more advanced technology develops, the more it looks to have control over our lives.
Today, the usage of technology is widely available and strongly encouraged in our society.
Although technology makes life easier for people, and it also creates some problems in our
society, such as a decline in common social behavior. Technology is the strength that acts as the
driving force to drive or to run our lives. It is nothing however the outcomes of the
improvements and creativity of human beings. (Katz and Aspden 1997).
It converts the natural resources into purchaser items which are used by using the society and
human beings. It has introduced the automation degree into such a top that human effort and his
time has been saved to a tremendous extent. Due to this, getting the access of information has
now become simpler and the distant locations are getting closer. Consequently, the use of
technology in all areas of lifestyles which mirrors negatively on the opportunity of its use in
absolute terms in all walks of life.

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 Since human beings are social by means of nature, relationships presently come to be greater
dominated by using the use of current technologies such as social media, which reduces the
distances, despite of having bad outcomes on human affiliates in society and family. We are
becoming alone day after day, is Technology the reason? Technology has become our closest
friend and yes it is really true that technology make us more alone. Just look around you and you
will realize that technology is all around you. (Kraut. 1998).
We are literally surrounded by technology and no matter where you go or at what place you
are; you will always find technology at your side and you may be use it in your day to day
routine and we can talk about the good side of it. We can contact people sitting at another part of
the earth and Apart from making our life easier; another major advantage of technology is that it
helps us to stay in contact. Thanks to the Social Media, Smartphones and Internet that we can
talk to our loved ones whenever we want and from wherever we want. We have come to a long
distance. Technology is there to make us feel good, satisfied and close to our friends and family
but, the reality is far from it. (Katz and Aspden 1997)
Technology is taking us far very far from our friends and family. With an increase in the use of
technology, things are changing at a rapid speed and we do not even realize it. The main aim of
the technology is to save us time and efforts but, slowly and slowly we are becoming addict to it.
Instead of saving the time, it is helping us in passing time and to be more precise, wasting time.
Not only this, the same technology which was making us connected to our loved ones is now
turning to be the cause of loneliness.
Loneliness can be described as the distressing emotional experience that emerges from
unfulfilled wants for social connection. In this sense, loneliness varies from social isolation.
Lonely people may additionally spend many hours with friendly coworkers or family members
and still feel unhappy with the excellent of these connections. Loneliness has emotional,
cognitive, and behavioral consequences that can have an effect on a person's potential to
consider their environment and social interactions. (Perlman, D and Peplau, 1982).

In this case there are many kind of technology, from them our discussion is only the
technology of internet (social media). New developments in the technological world have made
the internet an innovative way for individuals and families to communicate. Social media
networks have created a phenomenon on the internet that has gained popularity over the last
decade. People use social media sites such as Twitter (http://www.twitter.com), My Space
(http://www.myspace.com) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com).

From these Facebook is the most popular site which has about 1.5 billion active users as
reported. (Noyes D, 2013 Nov 14). Ethiopia is 12 th in Africa and 80th in the world (Social
bakers, 2014 a). Every new form of communication brings both positive and negative feedback
along with it. On one hand the Internet has been said to have created a new, different approach
towards interpersonal interaction improving individuals' lives, and on the other it has also been

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said to have eroded psychological wellbeing (by increasing loneliness and depression), weaken
real-world ties and reduce any sense of community involvement. No matter how important the
advantages or disadvantages of this new form of communication, it is still a fact that 80
percent of U.S. adults go online, whether at home, work or elsewhere. (Lim M H,2016).
And according to the Ethio telecom data, currently there are more than 4.5 million Internet
users in Ethiopia (Ethio Telecom, 2013). Loneliness is the current issues related to Social
Networking Sites which has caught attention of researchers. Those social media is to build and
keep relationships with others. These social media websites let those who use them create
private profiles, whilst connecting with other users of the sites. Users can upload photographs,
post what they are doing at any given time, and distribute private or public messages to
whomever they choose.
Young person's or young people use Social Network Sites (SNSs) to shape and preserve
intimate clique relationships with peers and to help themselves in the law of communications
SNS customers consequently share their thoughts with friends, renew old friendships and create
new In particular, the most of the SNS contacts are human beings already known respondents
tended to use Facebook and tweeter to keep in touch with people that they already knew, as well
as to meet new people that they have never met before. In this way, young people that use SNSs
and have no unique social problems can amplify and toughen friendships. However, les is
acknowledged about the effects of SNSs on teenagers who experience loneliness. (Lim M
H,2016).
CHAPTER TWO

2. Literature review

2.1. Definition

2.1.1. What is Social Media?

Social media are a collection of internet websites, services, and practices that support
collaboration, community building, participation, and sharing. Social media are applications that
enable people to interact with each other and build social networks (Barnes 2008). This massive
phenomenon is changing the way we create and use content (Comm 2010). As Comm (2010)
suggested, the definition of social media is ambiguous.

In the broadest sense, it describes a form of publishing in which stories are exchanged rather
than published within a community like a chat in a restaurant (Comm 2010, p. 3). In the narrowest
sense, however, social media describes how publishers can distribute their messages to thousands
of people, encouraging them to build strong connections and firm trustworthiness (Comm 2010).

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 Castells (2000) describes the network society as a culture that is constructed practically by
pervasive, interconnected, and diversified media systems (p. 1). In addition, the network society is
based on the idea of using computer-mediated communication (CMC) to promote cooperation
between two or more individuals and build social capital (Barnes 2008). Comm (2010) suggested
that perhaps the best definition of social media is that its content has been created by its audience
because the social part of social media means that "publishing is now about participation"
(Comm 2010, p. 3).
Those who use social media sufficiently create not only content but also conversations, and
those conversations combine further to create communities (Comm 2010). Spanner works (2007)
gave a similar working definition of social media as new kinds of online media that share most or
all of the characteristics of participation, openness, conversation, community, and connectedness.
Kaplan and Haenlein( 2010) defined social media more theoretically as a group of Internet-based
applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allow
the creation and exchange of user-generated content.
The concept of social media might be new, but the idea of using media environments for
socializing practices goes back to the age of the telegraph and telephone (Barnes 2008).
Nowadays, popular social media include instant messenger (IM), social network sites (SNS),
blogs, and microblogs like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Wikipedia. All of this site are work
by internet. (Barnes 2008).

The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet
protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link devices worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of
private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked
by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet
carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext
documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and
file sharing.

The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the United States Federal
Government in the 1960s to build robust, fault-tolerant communication via computer networks.
The linking of commercial networks and enterprises in the early 1990s marked the beginning of
the transition to the modern Internet, and generated rapid growth as institutional, personal, and

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mobile computers were connected to the network. By the late 2000s, its services and
technologies had been incorporated into virtually every aspect of everyday life.

Most traditional communications media, including telephony, radio, television, paper mail
and newspapers are being reshaped, redefined, or even bypassed by the Internet, giving birth to
new services such as email, Internet telephony, Internet television, online music, digital
newspapers, and video streaming websites. Newspaper, book, and other print publishing are
adapting to website technology, or are reshaped into blogging, web feeds and online news
aggregators. The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions
through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking. Comm (2010).

The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies

for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own policies. Only the overreaching
definitions of the two principal name spaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address (IP
address) space and the Domain Name System (DNS), are directed by a maintainer organization,
the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical
underpinning and standardization of the core protocols is an activity of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that
anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise. Kaplan and Haenlein( 2010).

2.1.2. What is Loneliness?

Loneliness is a complex and usually disagreeable emotional response to isolation. Loneliness
normally includes anxious emotions about an absence of connection or communication with
different beings, both in the current and extending into the future. As such, loneliness can be felt
even when surrounded through different people. The reasons of loneliness are various and
include social, mental, emotional and physical factors.

Loneliness is commonly wide-spread for the duration of society, consisting of people in

marriages, relationships, families, veterans, and those with successful careers. It has been
a lengthy explored theme in the literature of human beings in views that classical
antiquity. Loneliness has also been described as social pain a psychological mechanism
meant to encourage a man or woman to searching for social connections.

Loneliness has additionally been described as social discomfort a psychological mechanism

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supposed to encourage a man or girl to searching for social connections. Loneliness is regularly
described in phrases of one's connectedness to others, or especially as the unpleasant experience
that happens when a person's neighborhood of social relations is poor in some vital way. As
different theorists (Fromm-Reichmann, 1959; Ortega, 1969; Weiss, 1973) concur and as present
proof (Russell et at., 1978) indicates, loneliness is an emotionally unpleasant experience.

In particular, loneliness has been linked with feelings of established dissatisfaction,

unhappiness, depression, anxiety, emptiness, boredom, restlessness and marginality. Two
reputedly contradictory viewpoints have been expressed concerning the motivational aspects of
loneliness. On the one hand, some authors (see Sullivan, 1953) consider loneliness arousing. On
the other hand, other authors (Fromm-Reichmann, 1959) believe that loneliness can decreases
motivation. Several factors may be beneficial in resolving the interestingly paradoxical
motivational properties of loneliness Individuals who feel lonely have a tendency to develop
hypersensitivity to negative social information, to charge their social interactions extra
negatively, and to engage in more protecting behaviors. (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009; Cacioppo,
Hawkley,et al, 2006). Several extra formal definitions of loneliness have been offered via social
scientists.
There are three very necessary factors of agreement in the way scholars view loneliness.
First, loneliness results from deficiencies in a person's social relationships. Second, loneliness is
a subjective experience; it is not synony-mous with objective social isolation. People can be
alone without being lonely, or lonely in a crowd. Third, the experience of loneliness is
unpleasant and distressing. And the generalized lack of satisfying personal, social or community
relationship (Anderson, 1993 c).

2.2. Historical development

2.2.1. The Birth of Social Media

The first social media site that everyone can agree actually was social media was a website
called Six Degrees. It was named after the six degrees of separation theory and lasted from 1997
to 2001. Six Degrees allowed users to create a profile and then friend other users. Six Degrees
even allowed those who didn't register as users to confirm friendships and connected quite a few
people this way. From Six Degrees, the internet moved into the era of blogging and instant

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messaging. Although blogging may not seem like social media precisely, the term fits because
people were suddenly able to communicate with a blog other instantly as well as other readers.
(Jones, Steve, ed. (2002).

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The term blog is a form of the phrase Weblog which was coined by Jorn Barger, an early blogger
that was the editor of the site Robot Wisdom. By the year 2000, around 100 million people had
access to the internet, and it became quite common for people to be engaged socially online. Of
course, then it was looked at as an odd hobby at best. Still, more and more people began to utilize
chat rooms for making friends, dating and discussing topics that they wanted to talk about. But the
huge boom of social media was still to come. Although the younger
generation of today might not know about it, back in the early 2000's the website MySpace
was the popular place to set up a profile and make friends. Harmanci, Reyhan (2005).

MySpace was the original social media profile website, leading into and inspiring websites
like Facebook. But even though MySpace has a very small user base today compared to
Facebook and Twitter, there are musicians who have used MySpace to promote their music and
even be heard by record producers and other artists. Colbie Caillat is an example. Another
website that was one of the beginning social media websites was LinkedIn, still a social media
website today, geared specifically towards professionals who want to network with each other. In
fact, most of the social media websites we have today are similar to LinkedIn, in that they are
specifically about one particular thing, or they have some kind of unique quality that has made
them popular. (Wink, 2010).

While MySpace was a general social media site, LinkedIn was, and is still is, meant for
professional businesspeople to connect with each other to network, find jobs and socialize. In
2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched what would soon become the social media giant that would set
the bar for all other social media services. Facebook is the number one social media website
today and it currently boasts over a billion users. However, back in 2004, Facebook
(TheFacebook.com then) was launched just for Harvard students. Zuckerberg saw the potential
and released the service to the world at the website facebook.com. (Hirschorn, 2007)

In 2006, the popularity of text messaging or SMS inspired Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Noah
Glass and Evan Williams to create Twitter, a service that had the unique distinction of allowing
users to send tweets of 140 characters or less. Today, Twitter has over 500 million users.
Around 2010: The Rest of the Pack Before long, there were dozens of other websites providing
social media services of some kind. Flickr was one of the earliest and still is one of the most, but
others include Photobucket and Instagram, with Instagram gaining popularity today as one of the

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top social media sites to include on business cards and other media.
(http ://historycooperative.org). Tumblr, a microblogging website started in 2007 by David Karp
and now owned by Yahoo, is one of the sites that could be seen sprouting up in the late 2000s.
Foursquare was quite a popular website for a while, particularly with smartphones being used so
extensively, and then there is Pinterest, Spotify, and many others. Some of the most popular social
media platforms in the late 2000's included: Google Buzz, Loopt, Blippy, and Groupon. One of the
things that started happening right in this time period is that social media not only became widely
used, it also became widespread in business. (http://historycooperative.org)
Websites were starting to list their social media addresses, businesses would include Facebook
and Twitter addresses on their television commercials and many tools were being built to include
social media on websites for example: WordPress plugins that would allow users to include not
only links to their social media websites, but also to include their latest social media posts directly
on their websites. Social media icons were seen everywhere and it became almost unusual to see
businesses or brands without them.

In addition, social media began to be one of the ways in which internet marketers and website
owners would boost the visibility of their websites. The benefits of social media marketing for
business began to become quite clear to business owners large and small. Social media
bookmarking became quite popular and there were services that would bookmark a post or a
website across dozens or even hundreds of social media services. (Steeves, 2008)

Social media today consists of thousands of social media platforms, all serving the same - but
slightly different purpose. Of course, some social media platforms are more popular than others,
but even the smaller ones get used by a portion of the population because each one caters to a very
different type of person. For example: Instagram caters to the kind of person that communicates
through photographs best, and other platforms such as Twitter are perfect for those who
communicate in short bursts of information. As mentioned, businesses are using social media to
promote their products and services in a brand new way and so each form of social media serves a
purpose that the others available may not. (Steeves,2008)
2.3. Analysis one
In the next section, I will cover several supporting ideas showing how social media, and
internets, spatially Facebook can lead to psychological problems like loneliness, depression. It's

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clear that social media has negative personal impacts.

2.3.1. Internet Use, Social Networks and Loneliness:

With the advent of the Internet, a new field of investigation has emerged within computer-
mediated communication research. It focuses on the Internet and how it affects people's social
networks. The studies of Kraut (1998) and Cole (2000) use largely quantitative survey research
to identify, the effects of the Internet on people's relationships. Kraut (1998) first longitudinal
study on the effects of the Internet on social involvement and psychological well-being Showed
that greater use of the Internet was significantly associated with decreased communication
within the family, a decreased local social network, and increased loneliness and depression.
The study was a quasi-experiment using a sample of 169 respondents from 93 families who had
not previously been Internet users. They were each given a free computer and free access to the
Internet for one or two years in 1995 and 1996. The Internet and Society report by the Stanford
Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society (Nie 2000) documents negative consequences of
the Internet that are consistent with the findings of the Kraut group. Nie surveyed 4113 Internet
users within 2689 households in December 2009 and found that the more people used the
Internet, the less time they spent talking to their families and friends, the less time they spent
with them, and the less they attended events outside the household.
2.3.2. Facebook Depression

Facebook depression which is defined as depression that develops when individuals spend
excessive amounts of time on social media sites, such as Facebook, and then begin to
exhibit classic symptoms of depression. Seeking acceptance and staying connected with
peers is an important element of social life. However, the intensity of the online world,
which requires constant engagement, creates a factor of self-awareness that may trigger
depression in some people. As with offline depression, people who suffer from Facebook
depression are at risk for loneliness and sometimes turn to risky Internet sites and blogs for
help that may promote substance abuse, unsafe sexual practices, aggressive and self-
destructive behaviors.
Depression is one of the unplanned consequences of excessive social media usage. For
clarity, Facebook depression is not just limited to Facebook, but also refers to the impact of

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other social networking sites causing psychological problems. Because Facebook is currently
the largest and most widely used social medium, the phenomenon of social media caused
depression has taken its name. Clearly excessive social media usage leaves one susceptible to
be at a higher risk of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. (Mark W, 2013).

2.4. Analysis two

In this section I cover several ideas that run contrary with my claim.

2.4.1. Loneliness and Social Media

Research regarding loneliness and the use of social media has yielded mixed results. In an
early study, Amichai-Hamburger and Ben-Artzi (2003) found no statistically significant
relationship between loneliness and the social use of the Internet. In more recent studies,
Jelenchick, Eickhoff, and Moreno (2013) discovered no link between the use of social
networking and depression in adolescents and young adults while some researchers conclude that
posting on social media websites, like Facebook, helps people to feel less lonely (Deters & Mehl,
2013).

Conversely, some researchers posit that posting on such websites increases the chances of
being ignored and decreases the perceptions of belonging (Tobin, Vanman, Varreynne, & Saeri,
2014). To support this idea Katz and Aspden (1997) conducted a survey in October 1995 using
2500 respondents, 8 percent of whom were Internet users. Comparing users with nonusers, they
found no evidence of Internet use reducing people's membership in social and religious
organizations. Among users, greater use of the Internet was associated with increased contact
with family members and an increased participation in online communities.

Other studies have highlighted the positive effects of computer-assisted communication on

psychological well-being. In a review of ethnographic research, Turkle (1995) concluded that the
Internet offers a platform for social interaction that can increase the psychological well-being of
isolated people. With the pervasiveness of social media, more recent studies conducted with first
year college students found that using Facebook reduced feelings of loneliness (Lou, 2010), and
increased social capital (Steinfeld, Ellison, & Lampe, 2008). Additionally, Bonetti, Campbell and
Gilmore (2010) found that adolescents who self-identified as lonely expressed a preference for
online communication for social interaction to make friends.

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 Over time, the perceptions of loneliness are often determined by how the adolescents use
Facebook (Goossens, 2014). For example, if adolescents utilized Facebook to make new
friends, then feelings of loneliness were improved, but if Facebook was used to compensate for
a lack of social skills, then the feeling of loneliness increased over time (Teppers 2014).

This finding may help to explain results by Kross (2013), who concluded that, although
social networking may fulfill the need for social connection, over time, some young adults who
used Facebook reported a subjective decline in the feeling of well-being. Another study also
showed that the more lonely people feel, the more they tend to use Facebook over time (Kross
2013).

These mixed results regarding loneliness and the use of social media call for more
investigation into the relationship between these two variables and the potential impact on
teenagers' development and academic achievement.

2.5. Findings
Set of three studies draws attention to interesting aspects of the correlation between
loneliness and Internet use. In a study with 277 undergraduates from the United States,
Morahan-Martin and Schumacher (2003) found a significant difference between the lonely and
the non-lonely groups in the average number of hours spent online per week. Those with a
higher score in loneliness spent more hours per week online than did the other group (Morahan-
Martin & Schumacher, 2003). This finding is supported by Odaci and Kalkan (2010).

Their research project, which included 493 students, found that those with a high level of
loneliness were more likely to report problematic Internet use, which was defined as five or
more hours a day spent online (Odaci & Kalkan, 2010). Focusing on Internet use for
entertainment purposes, Whitty and McLaughlin (2007) conducted a study with 150
undergraduate students from a university in Ireland. This study revealed that loneliness is a
significant predictor of Internet use for computer-based entertainment and information about the
entertainment world (Whitty & McLaughlin, 2007). Considering the previous theories on the
impact of loneliness on users of the Internet, Lee and colleagues (2013) show that the use of
SNSs can improve the well-being of lonely people through the facilitation of self-disclosure and
social network support, and also provide emotional support and modulate negative moods (se

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Morahan-Martin & Schumacher, 203). The internet can help in socializing people that lack
sufficient resources in face-to-face relations and may help to overcome shyness and inhibition"
(Tepers, 2014).
2.6. Theories
Computer-Mediated Communication: The present paper can be situated within a broad academic
literature on computer-mediated communication. Even before the advent of the Internet, social
researchers were interested in how computers affect communication between and among people.
Research on computer-mediated communication has revealed both its negative and positive effects
in comparison with face-to-face communication.

The "cues filtered-out perspective" (Culnan and Markus 1987) has generally focused on the
negative aspects of computer-mediated communication. Nonverbal cues are generally filtered out
in computer-mediated communication, which decreases its richness in comparison with face-to-
face communication (Kiesler 1986). This communication tends to be more task-oriented and
impersonal (Hiltz et al. 1986), and it is generally not conducive to the development of close
relationships (Kiesler 1985).

Within the literature on computer-mediated communication, a new field of inquiry has emerged
that focuses on the Internet. Within this field, some have pointed to the potential problem of
Internet addiction (Young 1998; Young and Rogers 1998). Others have noted the possible
development of different virtual identities, which create the risk of a detachment from and an
increased dissatisfaction with (offline) reality (Turkle 1995).

2.9. My claim
Finally I thought based on what I have observed in my day to day living and what peoples
around me are doing with technology. And I thought about, is technology making us alone? Yes it
is really true the fact that we have become so dependent on knowing correctly what is going on in
other people's lives is sad. I should be focusing on my own lives and my town connections and
associations with people. Technology is making us more alone because instead of interrelating
with our friends in person, we are dependent on using our phones or tablets.
We start to compare ourselves and our lives to others because of how many likes we get on our
Facebook or Instagram. We are forgetting how to use our basic communication skills because we
are not cooperating with each other, anymore. We are too busy with our fronts in our phones. For

6
instance Young kids are dependent on a tablet to maintain them entertained as a substitute than
playing with toys.

We are spending too much time online subtracts time from important relationships like friends:
this adversely affects the well- being, increases loneliness and reduces social contacts. We are
ruining private relationships because of the dependency to our smart phones and checking our
social media web sites each five minutes. Technology is an incredible thing, but it is additionally
going to be the component that tears us apart as a society if we do not make changes on how
structured we are on it.

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 CHAPTER THREE

3. SOCIAL MEDIA AND LONELINESS IN OUR COUNTRY

Today social networking usage is becoming a critical issue especially in relation with the
Loneliness. The use of online social networking sites to communicate with family and friends and
to meet people has a significant effect on the ways people interact. It has increased people's
capacity for making and sustaining friendships as well as facilitating regular communication with
family and friends.

Currently there are more than two billion people worldwide using Internet (Pew Research
Center, 2013), and more than one billion people use a social networking site known as Facebook.
Besides, an increasing number of people have started using this social networking and most of the
users are youth (Socialbakers, 2013 b). In Ethiopia, reports indicate that the introduction of
telecommunications services dates back to 1894, when Minilik II, was then King of Ethiopia,
introduced telephone technology to the country. But the Internet technology was introduced in
1997. At that time the number of Internet subscribers was not more than 1000. One year later, the
number of subscribers rose by 98.5% and reached 2,068 subscribers. According to the Ethio
telecom data, currently there are more than 4.5 million Internet users in the country (Ethio
Telecom, 2013). Recently social networking sites particularly Facebook have become increasingly
preferred ways of communication among Ethiopian people's especially adolescent living in the
urban areas to get space for their opinion and forum.
Therefore, adolescents who have access to the technology are using Facebook as an alternative
communication tool as well as for several entertainment purposes, and as a source of information
for their psychosocial development (Allafrica.com, 2013). The growth of Facebook usage in

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Ethiopia is related with the availability of an Internet connection in private and public
institutions, and access to Internet enabled cell phones and computers.

Foreign studies (Socialbakers, 2014 a) reported that there are 1.5 million active Internet users
in the country and more than 93 percent of these Internet users are using Facebook. Besides,
form the total Facebook users in the globe, Ethiopia is 12 th in Africa and 80th in the world.
Besides, the majority of its users are youth (between the ages of 16-24) who are living in the
urban areas of the country (Socialbakers, 2014 a).
Concerning Facebook usage, previous studies show that there was a negative relationship
between Facebook usage and loneliness. In other words, adolescents who are high in Facebook
usage are slightly low in various aspect of psychological and social relationship with others
besides; negative online experiences were highly correlated with a variety of negative
psychosocial aspects such as loneliness, depression, social anxiety and low self-esteem (Johnson,
2004 and you, 2007).

Technology is a relatively new invention, but it's changing the way we converse. Electronics
have mainly been part of the evolution of the way we communicate in life with friends and
family. It used to be that we would send and receive letters and mail, but now we send each other
five word texts. In many ways it makes us social, but in even more ways it's making us alone.

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 CONCLUSIONS
The contributions of this article mainly involve the evidence to answer the key question:
Does technology make us alone? How does it do so? There is a mild positive effect of the
Internet on people's loneliness (that is, it is associated with a reduced loneliness). However, the
Internet has an indirect negative impact on people's loneliness through online socializing, and
this negative effect is stronger than the positive direct effect of Internet use.
Social media is making humans socially awkward. According to Cornell University's Steven
Strogatz, Social media sites can make it more difficult for us to distinguish between the
meaningful relationships we foster in the real world, and the numerous casual relationships
formed through social media. ("The Negative Effect of Social Media on Society and
Individuals") Social media can sometimes make people chose a social media site relationship
over a real world relationship.
Technology makes people think that they need their phones and that they can't live without it.
Dr. SherryTurkle, the author of Alone Together, said "These days we expect more from
technology than we expect from each other." We rely on our phones to let us share our opinions
with others and let others tell us their opinions, as if we have a personal connection. Many
people talk to friends that they know online but don't know in real life.

People say technology helps us keep in touch with others, but that's not true because many
times the interactions are not quality conversations. It may help us keep connected, but it's often
just a short text or a five to ten minute call. Technology has taught us bad habits of using short
sentences when we talk, so when we communicate on the phone it can be weird when you have
no idea what the person is talking about because they don't say enough about the topic.

Some people meet other people online and just talk online and never actually meet the person

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face to face. How does that make us social? We often forget about them until we see their name,
weeks later on a social media. This is an example of how attached we are to technology, we feel
happy when someone likes something we post about our lives. People nowadays use their
phones to get out of situations and put things off. For example, people avoid talking to others
by pulling out their phones and pretending that there is no one else is standing there.

Recommendation
Based on what I observed I made some recommendations as follows;

People nowadays can't even live without their phones because they care more about their
phones than their friends. Phones do make people more alone, even if they don't know it, but to
other people it's very obvious. So now, when you see someone with their phone at the dinner
table, tell them to put it down and talk to you in person and not others online. And for Students
who use it during class will pay just a little attention to what the lectures are saying. The fact that
students miss their lectures will lead them to perform their least academic performance.
This aspect not only affects the future of the students, but also the future and reputation of the
university. The excessive use of the internet will lead us to alone together and poor performance
by the students, which will affect the quality of education. Therefore, the university should really
consider blocking the usage of social network sites such as Facebook and open it only during
lunch break, or weekend.
And another strategy to build yourself real is Unplug: Turn of your computer, put down your
Phone, step away from your tablet, and take time to engage with people, in person, with face-
to- face communication. A Night at home with 500 of your FB friends can never compare with
an evening out with five friends, or even one friend. If you can't connect face-to-face level, at
least pick up the phone for a meaningful conversation, rather than a series of secret texts or
Facebook comments. Fifty text messages over a day can never compare or compete with just
five minutes of open, caring and honest conversation.
Act Local: Get involved in your local community or neighborhoods. For the vast majority of
us, the internet can help us to function better in our day to day work with global world but we
suggest that we just mustn't lose touch with the physical community around us, and the people in
it. While it's nice to be in touch with your old friends in another country over Facebook that

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cannot replace a more intimate face to face relationship. You need to balance this with
relationships within the community you are actually living in, we thought.
Finally we thought, in our country (Ethiopia) there is not too much Internet user but in the
future we predict there will be increasing because of rapid growing of technology. Then we have
to make prevention now and learn how to use properly without get affected by technology
related problem like loneliness.
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