Technology and new forms of expression

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Technology and New Forms of Expression
Advancement in technology has always brought happiness since the initial stages of the industrial revolution. These technologies have been developed to help human being in making work easier and information sharing. An advancement of technology has led to the invention of telephones, which people used to call and send messages to people they want. These telephones made people stop the habit of knocking on their neighbors and friend’s doors. The arrival of many social sites enabled many people today to share information and communicate with their friends through the chat messages. Sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Youtube, and Reddit have enabled people to share photos and send messages to friends abroad or ones that are within the country but are not easily available at the moment (Winner, 24). Social sites such as Facebook have changed the character of many people within the society today. Most people, particularly the youthful age are spending most of their time on Facebook rather than playing sports and making friends at school or with their neighbors. Mobile phones have made this behavior worse since many people spend most of their time pressing their mobile phone keypads, trying to access the social sites in class, at home, in the cars and any time they are free (Winner, 29).
The way in which people are so attached to these social sites is alarming since most people hide in secret places away from other people to access the information from these sites and share information.

However, this form of loneliness that most of the Facebook users encounter cannot be attributed to this site since human beings possess the right to choose when to use the site and when not to access the site. Casting the site as a vague, impersonal spirit that forces one to access the site is a lame excuse that human beings should cease from the excuse.
Although the new technologies such as the mobile phones lure people towards the increasingly superficial connections that are in the social sites such as Facebook, they also make people avoid the mess that people go through during the physical interaction (Marche). Facebook and other social sites help people to connect, exchange information and share photos online while sparing most of its users the embarrassing reality that exist within the society. Through Facebook, one can get friends from all over the world, but they will always know the person whom they see the edited photos that a user posts on the social site. Friends are not able to see the main individual and how he or she behaves around a group of people. However, the price that comes with the smooth social environment is the constant compulsion to assert the users happiness. Most users have gone past the contention of the social bounty of time and have gone to the extent of using their personal time used for learning, sporting activities and spending time with friend, just to be on Facebook (Winner, 43). This indicates a self-instilled loneliness that human beings expose themselves into it.
A research conducted by Iris Mauss at the University of Denver indicate that a person who values happiness is not guaranteed total happiness. Under certain conditions, such as a low life stress, the more individual values the aspect of happiness, the lower their psychological well-being, hedonic balance and a low life satisfaction (Marche). However, the person would experience higher symptoms of depression. Many Facebook Users think that hiding in their bedrooms at homes and the continuous access of the social sites every time of the day is having fun. However, they do not know that they are personally imprisoning themselves in a business of self-presentation, hence hindering one from participating in other interesting activities in the society. Sherry Turkle, a professor of computer culture points out in his book that people have embraced technology so much that they are unable to control their dependency on it. She states that when people are insecure in their relationships, they look upon technology to find the ultimate ways of being in a relationship and how to protect themselves from the relationships (Marche). Many people on social media have been involved in digital with digital intimacy, which never lasts due to its incomplete characteristic. Ties that many people form on social media are not ones that bind. They just preoccupy one’s mind. According to her, people tend to intrude on each other, but not in a real-time situation.
In conclusion, technology is a very important aspect within our society: However, human beings should implement strategies that will help them to avoid the overdependence on the technology for survival. This has influenced the way people interact with each other and has limited the number of times one has to meet with friends and have fun as a group rather than creating groups on the social site and engaging in personal talks. In this case, people should stop blaming the social media for having lonely environments and try to limit their amount of time they spend on the social sites since they possess the right to choose fully what they can do at any particular time.

Works Cited
Marche, Stephen. ‘Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?’. The Atlantic. N.p., 2012. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.
Winner, Langdon. “TECHNOLOGIES AS FORMS OF LIFE1.” Ethics and Emerging Technologies (2013): 48.