While so many believe that current technological advances connected people together, others have the opinion that in fact it has driven us apart. I personally believe that technologies are making people spend more time in the digital world, maintaining parasocial interactions with others and avoiding real experiences.
On one hand, some might argue that social media and other communicational tools available nowadays in fact brought people with the same points of view together, forming digital communities. Before this highly connected society that we live on today, people use to find it more difficult to interact with those with similar interests and ideas. Now, it is easier to form communities, based on opinions, political views, sexuality and more. Such phenomenon can be observed given the huge rise of the LGBTQAI+ community in the past few years, for example.
On the other hand, this constant connectivity can be harmful for our social interaction skills. Social media platforms are designed to give our brains instant gratification, which can make us addicted to this way of connection. The result of this behavior is a society formed by individuals that are only capable of maintaining interactions throughout digital platforms, causing us to not nourish our social skills in the real world with real people. This can be seen today, with younger generations growing up interacting via apps and games, but that are struggling to properly interact without the technology in their devices.
It is clear that the new technologies are here to stay and the benefits of their influence can be observed in both social and political spheres of debate. However, I think that the amount of social media that individuals are consuming is very alarming and those who defend a view that technology is causing our society to be driven apart should be heard as well, so that we can come to a common ground, with less kids developing parasocial interactions.