Phones are making people more, not less, social,

researcher says
Video by charstarleneTV

Technology is supposed to make us more connected. We can stay in

touch with our friends all the time on Facebook, Instagram and
Snapchat, and, of course, by texting. But are our smartphones actually
getting in the way of real socializing? Could technology be making us
more alone?

The above YouTube video from 2013 by the comedian and actress
Charlene deGuzman suggests just that. It has been viewed almost 50
million times. In “Disruptions: More Connected, Yet More Alone,” Nick
Bilton writes:
Ms. deGuzman’s video makes for some discomfiting viewing. It’s a direct
hit on our smartphone-obsessed culture, needling us about our addiction
to that little screen and suggesting that maybe life is just better led when
it is lived rather than viewed. While the clip has funny scenes — a man
proposing on a beach while trying to record the special moment on his
phone — it is mostly … sad.
When we asked this same question three years ago, the sentiment struck
a nerve with many students. In hundreds of comments, students talked
about how technology was often intruding in their relationships.
Taylor wrote:
I often find myself surrounded by people staring at their phones and I am
even guilty of doing it. I think if one person is staring at their phone,
everyone else tends to do it, whether it be self consciously or just in
order to avoid an awkward situation.
Madalyn shared, “My mother is always staring down at her smartphone,
never listening.”
Some students talked about trying to set boundaries. Bronte wrote:
I’ve set limits for myself when I’m hanging out with friends and family.
I’ve noticed that relationships become real. People become people, not
just fantasies of what their lives are portrayed as on social media.
Not everyone agreed, though. Nakota wrote:
I believe that technology is a great way to get into contact with other
people. I am a shy person, so I do not enjoy to talk to people face to face.
Skype is one way that I avoid this. I can have private conversations with
people I know personally.
Students: Watch the video, then tell us:

— Does technology make us more alone? Do you find yourself surrounded

by people who are staring at their screens instead of having face-to-face
conversations? Are you ever guilty of doing that, too?
— Is our obsession with documenting everything through photographs
and videos preventing us from living in the moment?

— Do you ever try to put your phone down to be more present with the
people in the room?

— Do you have rules for yourself or for your friends or family about when
and how you use technology in social situations? If not, do you think you
should?

— Do you think smartphones will continue to intrude more into our

private and social spaces, or do you think society is beginning to push
back?

— Alternatively, do you agree with students like Nakota who think

technology brings us closer together?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your

comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Smartphones are getting a bum rap. The common perception that as

people become increasingly attached to their devices they are becoming
less social is just wrong, according to Stanford communication scholar
Gabriella Harari.

In fact, people turn to their smartphones and other electronic tools to be

social, as well as to get information and to be entertained, Harari said. Her
research has found that people's behaviors online are shaped by who they
are and what they like to do, not just by the technologies themselves.

Harari's research examines two broad questions: What do digital

media reveal about personality, and how might digital media change
personality? To study these questions, Harari and her research group at
the Stanford Media and Personality Lab examine the ways digital media
can be used to provide insight into people's lives and promote behavioral
change.

Harari, who is an assistant professor of communication in the School of

Humanities and Sciences, recently talked to the Stanford News Service
about some of this work.

What do people most misunderstand about digital media's effects on

behavior?

I think that a general misconception that many may hold is that the advent
of digital media technologies has made us less social, in the sense that we
are talking to each other less face-to-face. But people's personalities
influence their digital media use, the technologies themselves are just a
medium through which they engage in various behaviors. For example, it is
obvious that smartphones have changed our behavior in the sense that
people today seem to be more often looking at their devices, as opposed
to, attending to their environment and the people in it.

But if we consider what people are actually doing on their smartphones—

communicating with others, seeking information or entertainment for
example—these behaviors are driven by who people are and the kinds of
activities they like to engage in. For example, in one study we found that
people who tend to engage in more calls and texts also tend to be the
people who engage in more face-to-face conversation. They also tend to
describe themselves as being more extraverted in general. So, people's
phone use reflects who they are, those who are more sociable tend to call,
text and talk more in person too. It's not just the technology that drives
behavior, our psychological dispositions influence the ways in which we
use our devices.

How does digital media influence a person's behavior?

Most of our work in this domain is focused on understanding how people

can harness digital media as self-tracking technologies to promote self-
insight and behavior change. Self-tracking consists of recording the
behaviors that occur in one's daily life, and is typically undertaken by
people who want to gain insight into their own behavioral or psychological
patterns.

Our research shows that young adults in college are interested in self-
tracking technologies (e.g., using their smartphones to collect data) to track
and improve their academic performance, manage their time and to-do
lists, track their exercise or diet patterns and understand when they are
most productive.

Moreover, we have found that people's individual characteristics are related

to their motivations for self-tracking. For example, younger students (e.g.,
freshmen, sophomores) were more interested in self-tracking using passive
and active self-tracking technologies to improve their productivity and
health behaviors, and their social life on campus. In contrast, female
students, students higher in neuroticism, higher in openness to new
experiences, and higher in depressive symptoms were more interested in
tracking their well-being and daily activities.

How are you using digital media to study personality?

Our use of digital media reveals a lot of personality-relevant information.
Personality refers to a person's tendency to think, feel and behave in
certain ways. So, consider the smartphone as an example. We use
smartphones to communicate with others, search for information, complete
transactions, play games and so on. The smartphone mediates our
behavior and creates a digital record reflecting our behavior in the device's
system logs. These digital records can be harnessed to infer personality-
relevant information about a person's tendency to behave in certain ways.
This approach is transforming the way we approach the study of
personality by providing a window onto the behavioral manifestation of
personality in daily life.

You recently looked at how young adults socialize across four common
communication channels: conversations, phone calls, text messages, and
use of messaging and social media applications. What were you surprised
to find?

When we describe a person as being "sociable" we are referring to their

tendency to affiliate with others (vs. be alone). There are obviously many
ways a person might use digital media to affiliate with others these days.
And yet, we still have a limited understanding of precisely how much
communication behavior people tend to engage in during a typical day or
week. So, our study was motivated by a need to understand the behavioral
manifestation of sociability.

We were surprised by the remarkable variability between people in their

behavioral tendencies. Some young adults showed behavioral tendencies
that suggest they were often alone or interacted with very few people on
most days, while other young adults seemed to interact with dozens of
people on most days.

During a typical day, the average young adult was around approximately 19
instances of in-person conversation for a total of 2.5 hours of conversation.
The average young adult also received and made about three calls for a
total of five to 10 minutes, received and sent about 32 text messages, and
used social media and messaging apps about 30 times. The amount of
social behavior young adults engaged in from day to day was highly stable,
suggesting that people tend to engage in similar levels of
social behavior from day-to-day in terms of the frequency and duration of
communication across these channels. Overall, our findings showed that
we can create reliable and valid assessments of people's sociability
tendencies based on behavioral patterns derived from their smartphone
data.
Technology is making people feel more alone rather than making
them feel more connected and independent without it.
Researchers have found that it is making people feel more
anxious and less independent.
Simultaneously technology feels more dependent on social
connections relatively then depending on real life
connections.Technology to communicate can reduce enjoyment
of face-to-face interactions, feel more anxious, and undermine
mental wellbeing. Loneliness may also be more painfully felt
online, where exposure to idealised images of friends can result in
negative social comparisons. Technology can feel more alone
because people can become more dependent on social media
connections than real life connections.
Recent studies have found that despite being more connected than
ever, more people feel more alone than ever. Another recent study
found that 48% of respondents only had one confidant compared
to a similar study 25 years ago when people said they had about
three people they could confide in. A study conducted in the UK
showed that people who spent a lot of time online exhibit
negative traits such as narcissism in real life. When users
constantly post about their lives and appearances and try to one-
up or copy Instagram influencers’ lavish lives, it causes self-
centeredness and lack of empathy for others. Into the bargain the
average amount of screen time being spent by people today has
grown to 11 hours. That’s an increase of nine hours and 45
minutes from last year’s research.
Technology provides the possibility to work remotely, to be able
to keep up with the news and its latest developments, and it
provides the ability to call with family and friends, and more
importantly, it keeps connected to each other. Although
technology has created the illusion that everyone is all highly
connected, and social when in reality people are deprived of real
human interaction, which has led to a loneliness epidemic and
lowered team commitment. The freedom that technology has
given has had the reverse effect on personal needs. Instead of
making people feel connected, they provoke feelings of isolation
and loneliness.
Technology can make people feel more dependent on social
connections relatively then depending on real life connections. It
is easier to make friends virtually than in real life. This shows
how attached to technology some people can be. Being too
focused on a screen makes people forget the difference between
being alone and being lonely. Technology negatively influences
our social interaction, it makes people more socially awkward and
lonely.
I think the answer to this question is yes, for most people
anyway. If you have the technology to give you access to
all the different social networks such as Facebook,
Twitter, and Instagram, I think that’s how you
communicate with people. While social networks are
making it easier to keep contact with old friends or just
the people in your life, all the smart phones and different
apps are making people more and more isolated, even
though they’re constantly checking all the updates on
these sites. They feel that hearing from their friends in
this way means that they’ve communicated with them in
some way, when they are probably alone when they are
checking all the different networks.
Twitter has a limit of 140 characters for when you’re
posting an update, or a “tweet”. If you’re relying on that
to keep your friends up to date with what’s happening,
it’s not going to work. People still need to make phone
calls instead of just texting, they need to send a letter
along with a package for a friend that maybe they
haven’t talked to in a long time.
This is a good topic because I think almost everyone can
relate to it. I know that I am pretty much constantly on
my phone and that can be really irritating when you’re
with a group of people. We all need to think about how
much we use technology in today’s world and maybe
change the way we communicate a little bit. I think it’d
do everyone a bit of good!

Unsocial Generation – Kelcie Hansberry

Yes, I do believe that social media is making society less

social. We are so involved with each other through social
media, people connect through sites like facebook,
twitter, and instagram. Now we are even getting jobs
through social media with linked in. I do not believe that
we are going to change what we are doing though, I think
that we are going to get even more attached to social
media in the coming years. The younger generations are
even more attached to media, and use it to connect with
their friends and spend more time than necessary on it.
The older generations do not need technology like our
generation, they actually despise it. This shows how
much we do not need the technology but obsessed with
it. We cannot go with out tweeting, texting, or
facebooking to connect with the world around us. To me
when kids spend hours and hours on social media and
not out socializing with other children they are missing
out on their childhood. This could also lead to many
different social problems later in life that could eventually
affect the society as a whole.

Is Technology Making Us Less Social? –

Emily Catron

My opinion on this is YES. Technology has advanced so

much in the last few years and the effects it has had on
us are apparent. A few weeks ago I lost my Iphone for
two whole days. Luckily both days I didnt have my phone
I was with my boyfriend who had a smart phone also and
I was able to use his when i wanted. For two hours of the
day I had to go to the library without any electronic
devices or any way for people to get ahold of me. Making
a schedule for exactly what time and exatly what place i
was going to be at to be picked up was difficult, since i
didnt have my phone I couldn’t just text and say meet
me “here”. While in the library that day I met 2 new
people, one in which I still talk to. I firmally believe that if
I had my phone that day I wouldnt have the one friend I
made because I would have had my face burried in my
phone and wouldnt be engaging in conversation.
Something else that comes to mind when I think on this
topic is how people use technology in public. I find it
interesting pay attention to groups dining in resturaunts
and how they converse with each other, and also how
they uses (or dont use) their technology. Sometimes in a
small group of people I can catch each of them on their
phones while trying to carry on converstaions or just
sitting in silence. We have a hard time carrying out our
everyday lives without technology and although I am not
proud of how dependent I have become on technology, it
scares me to think of life without it.

Is Technology Making Us Less Social? –

Adam Krebsbach

As technology has increased over the decades, everyday

things that were once tedious, and time consuming, are
now simple tasks. For example, online shopping has
allowed people to purchase items without leaving their
home. Saves time and money; it also lets us avoid
interacting with anyone we may find…unsavory. Of
course, we are also prevented from interacting with
others as we stay cozily in the home. There is a certain
sacrifice when using technology like this; though not all
technology will affect us the same. Though we
sometimes keep away from social situations, social
networking sites (i.e. Facebook, Twitter) provide us the
opportunity to talk to many people at once. So again the
question arises, is technology making us less social?
There is no simple answer; as one might suspect with a
not-so-simple topic. There has been research that shows
both yes, and no. One study, found in American
Psychologist, looked at 169 people during their first two
years of using the internet (which was only allowed for
communicative purposes). Results of this two year study
showed that participants with high internet use had lower
communication with family members, and they also had
a lower social circle (Kraut, p. 1017). On the other hand,
another study was conducted using 241 individuals.
Among other traits, shyness was rated for all
participants. Their use of social networks was then
monitored. This study found that the shyer an individual
was, the more they used social network sites. With this,
we can say that social networking sites can allow for shy
individuals to socialize in a stress-free environment
(Baker, p. 873).
Another topic for discussion on technology and people’s
social tendencies, is whether or not video games have an
effect on our social lives. I certainly know of some co-
workers, friends, and ex-roommates that have become
lost in a video game. However, there are two distinctions
of video game use that need to be made.
First are those “gamers” who play with friends, online
and offline. This provides a similar structure as a social
networking site in that one can communicate back-and-
forth with others. It is no surprise then that results of
multiple studies share the same findings for video games
that were found for social network sites. Both can cause
people to behave less socially, but it also allows the
opportunity to be social for others who may be too shy
for face-to-face communication. Of course, not everyone
plays online with others. Now we should look at those
“gamers” that play by themselves. I am going to use a
personal experience for this example. I once had a
roommate that was into World of Warcraft. ReallyMy
roommate was the first person I had known that played
that game, so I was not yet aware of the addictive effect
it can have on people. There was a period of about
month where he did not leave the basement (except to
stock up on canned tuna and Gatorade). He did not
communicate with anyone, and every time I walked
downstairs, my senses were overwhelmed with stale tuna
smell and techno. He did not socialize with anyone, even
in the house, for this entire period. Clearly this is not
ideal social behavior, and there are cases sadly more
people in this situation.
To conclude this entry, it is safe to say that technology
does indeed have an impact on how we socialize. In
some cases it tends to make people less social and
causes isolation. However, it is also helpful to many as
well. Of course, as Kacey previously said, it all depends
on how people use the technology.
References:
Baker, L. R., & Oswald, D. L. (2010). Shyness and online
social networking services. Journal of Social and Personal
Relationships, 27(7), 873-889. Retrieved
from http://search.proquest.com.er.lib.k-state.edu/docvie
w/835111771?accountid=11789
Kraut, R., Patterson, M., Lundmark, V., Kiesler, S.,
Mukophadhyay, T., & Scherlis, W. (1998). Internet
Paradox: A social technology that reduces social
involvement and psychological well-being?. American
Psychologist, 53(9), 1017-1031. doi: 10.1037/0003-
066X.53.9.1017
Is Technology Making Us Less Social? –

Kacey Krehbiel

I am really excited to start this blog and cover some

different topics under our main category of the effects of
mass media and technology on society. The first topic is
the question: Is technology making people less social? I
think this is a loaded question and I am not sure there is
any right or wrong answer. It all depends on how each
person uses the technology that is available today.
I can easily relate to this topic. After I did some research
it has really opened my eyes. Looking at how I use
technology in my own life I soon realized that I most
likely use it too much. No matter where I go I always
have my cell phone within arms reach. I am constantly
texting people and checking Twitter and Facebook on it
as well. When I am not on my phone I am usually on my
laptop doing various things and it usually involves a
social network of some kind. I have even caught myself
being on Facebook on my phone and laptop at the same
time. HOW PATHETIC IS THAT? Sometimes I even replace
face to face contact with just a text or a tweet and that is
not a good thing. Social Networks can be a great thing,
but they need to be used in moderation. We still need to
see, feel, and talk to people in person. Don’t let social
networks take the place of those things!
I found a short documentary called “Technically Unsocial”
Directed by Daniel Johnston and Bernard Bushnell and
Produced by David Evans. There are two parts and I have
posted them below:
This video shows a good example of over-using
technology and not getting out into the real world and
doing face-to-face socializing.
At the end of the video, Daniel Johnston, the narrator
says a great quote: “At the end of the day life is for
living, so why waste it at the end of a keyboard?”
Sources: http://www.youtube.com
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