Some people argue that new digital devices and technology in general transform our world from its hard version to a soft and easy one, while other people think that human social life was the tax of this technical development.
On the one hand, it can be argued that technology has helped us to skip a lot of modern world difficulties, making our lives much easier than ever before, where access to many services became available at the push of a button. For example, students nowadays could find billions of books online to do their academic studies without any need to search in public libraries or travel to other cities and countries to get a single copy of a certain book. Thus, technology has made it easier for those students to invest their money and time in researching rather than traveling; they also could attend their courses online without going to schools and universities, which makes education less difficult than it used to be. However, I disagree with the arguments above; in contrast, I think that technology has created new and more serious difficulties, and, far from solving practical problems, it has generated a host of new moral and social difficulties.
On the other hand, people’s relations have been negatively affected by technology; it seems like it has created huge barriers between them. This has led to the distortion of many valuable concepts such as “family,” “friendship,” “love,” etc. Moreover, current relations have become more digital, which means they are based on distance instead of proximity, devices instead of souls, and this is what we call “mechanization of relationships.” For example, family members, like siblings, sons, and parents, these days use social media to connect with each other. It does not become strange anymore to hear that those siblings have not met each other for a really long period of time. Furthermore, online education might impact negatively on students’ social lives. While universities provide real social experiences for their undergraduates, Zoom platforms do not. I strongly support this perspective because I believe that the more technology solved material problems, the more it created social ones. And these are more dangerous and serious.
In conclusion, while technology has made our lives much easier, these facilities have come at the expense of our social life, including our relations with the people around us.