Technology & Family Relationships

Matt Brady

Why it is Important? It is important to understand how and why technology is able to do both bring

families together and drive them apart

What is it about technology that makes it so influential on our family relationships?

The first relationships we develop as people are with our families and now those relationships are being threatened by the increased use and availability of technology.

In today’s day and age almost every one has technology at their disposal. This can lead to families being together even when they’re apart or can lead to families being apart even when they’re together.

Increased Number of Users One reason technology has had such an impact on the way we interact with our

family is due to the substantial amount of increased users in today’s world

Approximately 95% of people from ages 6-19 now have access to internet.

The US. Census Bureau have been keeping track of the increased number of internet and technology users

The overall world internet population has doubled in the last 5 years. From 1.15 billion to now 2.27 billion people.

58% of smartphone owners have admitted to not being able to go 1 hour without checking their phones.

Improved Communication

Technology has been able to and helped families better communicate with each other.

It connects long-lost relatives and enables them to reconnect

Communication has become a quicker act and a message can be sent and received at the same time

It can now be synchronous(instant messaging) occurring instantaneously

Rather than occurring asynchronous(sending a letter)

Family communication has become more efficient through technology.

They are able to communicate through Facebook and other SNS

No Geographical Boundaries It seems that in our society today that people are becoming more mobile than

before

People are moving more often now than they used to because of job opportunities and some of these jobs require you to frequently travel or move to conduct business

The frequent travelling of family members used to cause a loss of communication due to the long distance relationship.

Long distance relationships occur when communication is restricted because of geographic parameters and the people involved in the relationship expect a continued close connection.

With new technology people are able to communicate with their families as if they weren’t separated by hundreds of miles.

No Geographical Boundaries

Cell phones allow families to call or text each other sending and receiving them instantaneously

Skype is a way for people to video call one another so it is like you are talking face-to-face as if you were actually in the same room as the person you were conversing with

It is easy to lose contact with people after they

move but technology has helped us stay

connected with those we are close with no

matter the distance

Creates isolation Although technology is good for helping us stay connected and communicating

with people it has its disadvantages as well.

Technology causes us to isolate ourselves Through the use of computers and smart phones we block ourselves out from the real

world and get stuck in the virtual one.

Kids are starting to spend more and more time on the Internet and less with their families and friends. It is estimated that kids from the ages of 8-18 spend somewhere from 50-70 hours on

technology a week. That would be over 7 hours a day.

With the inventions of smartphones and websites like Twitter and Facebook kids are becoming more and more isolated from their families.

Isolation Rather than going out with their family teens are now more inclined to want to

stay inside and play video games or be on their computer.

In a recent study teens have been found to interact

or communicate with their friends and family more

on their phones than face-to-face 54% of teens reported that they’d rather communicate

through text or their phones than have a face-to-face

conversation.

This leads to teens not actually interacting or communicating

with their families and therefore isolating themselves from the family

Relationships Suffer Technology has done great things for the world of communication, but one negative thing

it has done is make conversations and relationships more impersonal.

Relationships and conversations with your family should always be personal its your family, but now with technologies people are treating those relationships as if they were just another friendship; sending one work text messages to each other.

Although computers and technology seem to come second nature to teens most of it is still rarely new and parents aren’t sure how to deal with technology in our lives

This puts strain on relationships because parents try to connect with their kids, but they aren’t sure how to do it in this new technological age.

It also does not help that teens become impatient with their parents when they don’t know how to use technology and start up on websites like Facebook where teens felt free from there parents.

Relationships Suffer

Some research has shown that parents are trying to take action against the technology their children use

Through means of limiting the amount of time they were allowed to use it and also by screening what their kids were doing online.

This seems to lead to more disconnect from parents to children because the kids start to feel like they have no freedom in the real and virtual world which leads to more fights and isolation from the family

Another study has shown that more and more parents are relying on technology in order to raise their kids than in the past

Kids are being brought up and raised by television and computers.

Now vs. Then The dynamics of family relationships have changed substantially from the past

before technology and how it is today.

Before technology families used to spend much more time together talking to each other and enjoying a nice family dinner

Today it seems as though families don’t have enough time for each other whether they are busy at work or too busy preoccupying themselves with technology Even when families do find “family time” for each other most of the time they are

physically together, but emotionally and mentally they are not.

Most teens have portable technologies at their disposal at any time in the day and even parents have those technologies now too so most family time is a group of people getting together so they can ignore each other for technology

Now vs. Then

Before technology became prevalent in society families would like to eat together and spend time with one another.

Sundays were days in the week that the family stayed in and spent the day together. Now if you ask parents or children what Sundays mean to them, most say it is just another day or the day before they have to get back to work.

Now vs. Then

Kids were surveyed and it was revealed that the majority of them felt that family time was like some sort of chore

Some teens also feel like they are being punished when they are forced to spend time with their family.

Some parents have become so concerned with how their family interactions have fallen off they have taken to the internet to look up how a normal family functions.

What’s Been Studied

As technology has become more and more popular in our society more research and studies have been done on it

Studies have been done on how technology helps long distance relationships

How it affects relationships in general

The impacts that technology has had on our society

What Has Yet To be Studied

There is still a lot in the area of technology that has yet to be studied

There has yet to be direct studies that show a relationship between family time and technology.

There have also not been studies that show the emotional toll that the affects of technology have on people