How does the widespread pervasive use of technology affect our personal relationships?

• How does the widespread pervasive use of technology affect our personal relationships?

We are increasingly becoming more “plugged in” as a society and our ability to access information is greater than ever before. Has human desire for omnipotence made us more susceptible to losing touch while being “plugged in”? Specifically, has the blackberry at our bedside or laptop in our Longchamp made us focus less on other people when there right in front of us? I have personally witnessed this new sort of absentmindedness in conversations with loved ones and also in strangers in their dealings with loved ones. One minute you’re having a conversation with your brother and he receives a text – the conversation all of a sudden loses it’s importance as he looks up at you, down at his phone screen all the while trying to talk and text. I don’t know about you, but it sure doesn’t make me feel good when I’m  talking to someone and they are fidgeting with their phone. What’s with the obsession around email? You would think average college students were’nt corresponding with the President or the Pope, but I don’t know sometimes. Perhaps they are and that’s why their constantly checking email.

I would conduct an experiment to see how much of an impact technology has on our personal relationships. I would use two groups of people of around 20 people each, all of them being married with children and keep their environments constant. I would keep the groups somewhat similar in terms of education levels, geographic region and knowledge/access to technology. The dependant variable in this experiment would be the experimental groups access to technology – there would be none. The control group would still have access to their cellphones, tablets, Skype, email while the experimental group would be deprived of all of these things for a period lasting one month.

Once these conditions have been set, I would have a survey of maybe 20 questions in which respondents would answer from 1 to 6, 1 being highly unlikely and 6 being very likely and the questions would consist of the types of behaviors of those in their households. The 20 or so questions would monitor how likely it would be that a household member would react to something in a certain way or would engage/abstain from something. How closely the answers of the respondents answers correlate with the actual behavior of the household members would indicate greater closeness in the household. Both the control and experimental group members would have to complete the survey at the end of each week for a total of 4 surveys at the end of the experiment. I would compare the correlations accessed of the control group and the experimental group to see if depriving the experimental group of technology actually enabled them to be aware of the present moment with their loved ones and increase the level of perceived closeness within the household. I would also have the respondents rate themselves to see if they believed they had become more close to their loved ones at the end of each week and note their self-reports.

I believe that the experiment would show that those in the control group at the end of the experiment have more understanding of their loved ones behavior and a therefore developed closeness than those who were not deprived of their access to technology.

This study could show, if my hypothesis proved correct, that limiting our use of technology outside of work actually improved our relations with other human beings. The study could also show that as a result of an increase in the quality of personal relationships, people also recorded higher levels of happiness. These results could maybe even persuade employers limit contact with employees after hours to increase overall quality of life for the employees and increase productivity.