Sociology Essay: Technology, Society, and Communication Analysis

This sociology essay examines the multifaceted effects of technology on society, communication, and various aspects of human life. It explores the weakening of family relationships due to device usage, the impact of virtual entertainment on children's social development, and the rise of obesity linked to sedentary lifestyles. The essay also investigates the positive influences of technology in education, the effects of mobile phone usage on maternal depression, and the changing landscape of healthcare due to technological advancements. Furthermore, it analyzes the evolution of social communication through electronic means, highlighting both the benefits and drawbacks of virtual socialization, including the risks of social isolation, dehumanization, and online hostility. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of balanced technology usage to enhance social communication and maintain strong relationships within families and society. The analysis draws on various research sources to support its arguments, providing a comprehensive overview of technology's impact on the modern world. The essay provides a thorough examination of the impact of technology on society, communication, and family dynamics, offering a critical perspective on the modern world.

Running head: SOCIOLOGY
Sociology
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Research topic: Technology and its effects in our life
The evaluation of technology has changed the society drastically. A good number of
individuals across the world uses as well as gets benefited from the modern technology and the
huge amount of opportunities provided by the technological advancement is playing a massive
role in all phases of human beings. Technology has ease out the right to use a good number of
necessary factors that include education, industry, medicine, communication, transportation, and
so on. However, massive usage of technology possesses its drawbacks. Technology is right only
at the aspects where it is needed, but when it is used for small purposes, it is making our
lives less worthy, which we in today's world have no idea what it is. It would be easier to
lead a life with limited usage of technology and enhanced bonding between the members of the
society. The fact that the speed of completing tasks gets higher with the assistance of technology,
if often is not realized by human beings that its development has intricate life a good number of
ways. In the following paragraph, the affect of technological advancement on the society and
how technology has affected communication will be analysed.
One of the major negative impact that is imposed by technology on our daily life style is
technology has weakened the relations amongst the family members. Often, it is seen that being
busy due to miscellaneous devices, family members lacks a convivial ambiance as they used to
have in the past. Family members, before the emergence of technological advancement, use to
spent time with each other and spent their leisure time together. This, in turn enhanced the bond
between the members. According to researchers, children who spent more time with their family
develop a positive outlook towards life along with effective emotional intelligence. Thus family
time can be considered as an essential factor that helps in creating strong bond as well as
relationship amongst the family members. This in turn helps the same in coping adverse

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situations, inculcate family values, instil a feeling of security and much more. Innovation of
video games and similar kind of virtual entertainment tools for children is imposing negative
impact on the social development of children. According to researchers, playing with peers in the
playground enhances the genitive and emotional development of children. They develop the
feelings of being and belonging and this in turn, enhances their social skills. Thus usage of
technology for entertainment for children is imposing negative impact on their development.
Keating, Elizabeth, and Mirus pointed out that amongst the adverse impact of technology,
obesity can be considered to be the most dangerous one. With the emergence of laptops, smart
phones and other portable devices, the working hours of employees have got enhanced
Prolonged working hours as well as spending leisure time on laptops ad tablets enhance the
tendency of individuals to consume unhealthy food items Not only this, the urge of individual to
perform physical exercise has got also reduced to a great extent. Prolonged working hours in
front of computers have led to less blood circulation, neck pain as well as head ache. Along with
this, sedentary life can be considered to be the reason why a good number of people have a
curved backbone as well as bad posture. Obesity due to lack of exercise is the leading cause of a
good number of heart diseases.
However, Hancock, Thom-Santelli and Ritchie have argued that it is the responsibility of the
society to use the technological advancement in an effective way so that the optimum benefits
can be utilized. In this era of technological advancement, it is not possible to keep children away
from technology. For instance, technology helps parents for communicating with their offsprings
in order to know their location since its always enough for the safety of the children just to stay
connected with the family.

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When it comes to usage of technologies in educational fields, it has been observed that majority
of the technological advancement have resulted in enhancement in the quality of their knowledge
and have enhanced their interest of learning. The internet, in this era, has become a great tool for
learning (McGrath, Joseph and Hollingshead). Any information can be googled from the internet
which saves the time that was spent by searching for information in the library or attending
online course. Not only this, Sommers et al. stated that students studying through eBooks spend
more significant time and using an e-text was greater after experience with the modality. Not
only this, students who studies with the help of e-texts are found to spending more time on
studying as well as on practicing.
Along with our professional life, technology is also implementing impact on our personal ife.
Accoring to Newsham, Drouin and McDaniel, prolonged and problematic usage of mobile
phone, televisions and other technological gadgets is one of the chief reason behind maternal
depression. Parents who are found to be using technology interfaces are as spending less time
with their children are found to be more depressed compared to parents who spends more time
with their offspring and are involved in activities like playing an storytelling.
However Sommers et al., started that involvement of technology does not always guarantee the
quality of education. Over usage of technology in classroom adversely affects the learning
process. Not only this, it has been found that with the implementation of technology base
learning sytem, the tendency of cheating as well as plagiarism have got increased and critical
thinking have declined. A good number of studies have claimed that the more students use
technologies that includes games or social media, the less will they perform academically.

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According to Shih, technology along with its increased usage in the healthcare field is
changing as well as evolving constantly. The increased stress of Registered Nurses as well as
enrolled nurses is resulting in reduction in job satisfaction and loyalty of the healthcare service
providers. This in turn is imposing negative impact on the treatments of the heath care service
users. In order to deal with such issues, it is highly crucial for the heath care management to pay
attention to monitoring and understanding the needs of RNs, ENs and APNs along with focusing
on implementation of technologically advanced equipments. The attitudes of the end users like
the Advanced Practice Nurses (APN)s posses the potential to impose impact on the successful
usage of technology and hence requires constant monitoring. This in turn will help the healthcare
management to understand the educational as well as training needs of the APNs. This in turn
will enhance the job satisfaction, collaboration and team work as well as quality of care.
Social communication can be considered as one of the most effective way through which
individual develops and maintain their attachment with the society. According to psychologists,
social involvement helps an individual to stay away from any kind of psychological issues like
depression, anxiety and social isolation. With the emergence of technological advancement,
manifestation of a good number of new methods of electronic communication like social
networking websites, emails, voicemails, and video conferences can be evidenced. The
mentioned communication tools helps individual to conduct effective communication while
eliminating time and distance. This communication tools are beneficial both for professional as
well as personal aspects. Alcântara, Caroline et al., stated that in spit of the various benefits of
technologies, it is highly crucial for individual to learn and maintain a balance between cyber
world and real world. Over usage of technology posses the potential to affect thee quality of
communication. Being involved in virtual socialization makes it difficult for individuals to

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socialize in their real life. This often leads to social isolation. Communication though virtual
media reduces face-to-face interaction that often leads to depression as well as loneliness.
Shortage of a support system possesses the potential to make it difficult for users to reach out as
well as find help for these issues. Along with this, virtual socialization also includes the risk of
dehumanisation and depersonalization. Considering the fact that one of the major advantages of
the internet is anonymity. Often users tend to explore as well as communicate through virtual
world anonymously. When the Internet possess the potential to reduce an individual to a screen
name, it becomes highly difficult remember that an actual individual exists at the back the avatar,
that has the potential encourage hostility and exclusionary behaviour. Young individuals are
more likely to conduct as well as get victimized of online resentment, with 43 percent of children
who reported that they've suffered online bullying.
Social communication can be considered as one of the most effective way through which
individual develops and maintain their attachment with the society. From the above discussion, it
can be clearly understood that technological advancement, though a necessary part of our day to
day life, uses of technology needs to be kept limited in order to enhance social communication
and relationship between both the family members as well as members of the society.

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Reference List
Alcântara, Caroline Magalhães de, et al. "Digital technologies for promotion of healthy eating
habits in teenagers." Revista brasileira de enfermagem 72.2 (2019): 513-520.
Hancock, Jeffrey T., Jennifer Thom-Santelli, and Thompson Ritchie. "Deception and design: The
impact of communication technology on lying behavior." Proceedings of the SIGCHI
conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 2004.
Keating, Elizabeth, and Gene Mirus. "American Sign Language in virtual space: Interactions
between deaf users of computer-mediated video communication and the impact of
technology on language practices." Language in Society 32.5 (2003): 693-714.
McGrath, Joseph E., and Andrea B. Hollingshead. Groups interacting with technology: Ideas,
evidence, issues, and an agenda. Sage Publications, Inc, 1994.
Newsham, Genni, Michelle Drouin, and Brandon T. McDaniel. "Problematic phone use,
depression, and technology interference among mothers." Psychology of Popular Media
Culture (2018).
Shih, Debbie Ramos. "Attitudes and perceptions of advanced practice nurses towards health
information technology and its effects on caring." (2017).
Sommers, Samuel R., et al. "Quasi-experimental and experimental assessment of electronic
textbook experiences: Student perceptions and test performance." Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning in Psychology 5.1 (2019): 11.