Current Events > Like it or not, technology is a heavy contributor to social phobia.

(+) Yeah! (+)

We've grown into playing games and on our phones. We talk to people trough text messages. More and more games are losing local gaming features (if multiplayer) and embracing online play. People are brought to feeling safe online in talking shit to one another because there's no direct confrontation.

With the push for automation such as self-driving vehicles and concepts such as food delivery services, society is really embracing this anti-social society rather than looking at ways to fix it.

This is one of the main reasons I gave up console gaming. It takes a hold of you and for some reason, we don't want to be social anymore. We are social creatures. We feel the need for the companionship of others and that really depresses people deep down not having those people to confide in or have direct social contact with.

I feel like while it is necessary, modern day technology is going to be the death of us.

What do you all think about this? I use technology as well, but I was once held firm in the need every day of my earlier life. I fucking hated it. Depression, anxiety issues, and no progress in life. I used to be a non-contributor to society and pretty much on a one-way path to failure... and I am not falling for the ruse behind it all anymore.

Those of you with depression issues and anxiety, I think it is essential for you to cut your technology uses down and try to actually force yourself into more social situations. This shit is dangerous to us all.
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Don't talk to me or my wife's son ever again.

You believe in dis but not bigfoot
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I think you actually completely wrong. Technology is giving people more and more tools to socialize and it has given people that have absolutely no social skills the ability to communicate with people. You have less face to face interaction, yes, but social media platforms and places like this message board have greatly expanded the avenues of communication.

Also have to disagree with you on console gaming. If you are playing multiplayer games and are trying to be involved with the communities you will have way more friends and social engagement than you would in most irl contexts
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I had extreme social phobia before technology had much role in my life, and it wasn't getting any better (worse, if anything). Technology actually allows me to be MORE social than I otherwise would be.
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Generally agree with all of this. One of the most basic needs all people have is social companionship, and that isn't fulfilled via online interactions.

But the problem isn't necessarily the tech itself, it's using the technology as a substitute for socialization rather than a tool to aid it. If you're leveraging Facebook and other apps to meet people in real life you might not have been able to meet up with otherwise, it's great. If, instead, you're just pulling your phone out of your pocket every 10 seconds when you're out and using technology/gaming as a replacement for doing social activities, it's harmful.
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I agree. Am a tech addict myself, its not good :-(
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josifrees posted...

I think you actually completely wrong. Technology is giving people more and more tools to socialize and it has given people that have absolutely no social skills the ability to communicate with people. You have less face to face interaction, yes, but social media platforms and places like this message board have greatly expanded the avenues of communication.

Also have to disagree with you on console gaming. If you are playing multiplayer games and are trying to be involved with the communities you will have way more friends and social engagement than you would in most irl contexts

Admiral kind of took the words out of my mouth on this one.

People use these online means as ways of living though. It's one thing if you use it for say.... meetup.com where you find a group to hang out with IRL with similar interests, but the way most people use it just kills their ability of being social. Yes, social media and message boards are nice, but you cannot tell me honestly you don't feel lonely or don't feel confined to your online world. Far too many people rely on it and this depression spike for people hit us heavily within the last couple of decades. It's to the point almost everyone has a mild form of depression or worse.

Online games and involvement are temporary fun. Sure, you might make a good online friend, but there's no companionship at all that way. As human beings, we need physical interaction. People can deny it, but we crave attention or socialization just by nature. Technology is dumbing us down into drones.
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josifrees posted...

I think you actually completely wrong. Technology is giving people more and more tools to socialize and it has given people that have absolutely no social skills the ability to communicate with people. You have less face to face interaction, yes, but social media platforms and places like this message board have greatly expanded the avenues of communication.

As Addy said, the problem comes when people use social media as a substitute for human interaction, rather than a helpful addition.

I seem to come across a lot of people these days who are even scared to talk on the phone. They'd just rather text. That doesn't seem healthy to me.

I can't see how communicating via message will ever be a healthy substitute to actually talking to people and taking in their features and hearing their voice and making eye contact. You don't get to practise how to respond instantly when you have all the time in the world to think up a witty reply.

For example, I know a lot of people who are fiery and vivacious on social media, but you meet them in real life and all that passion and intensity is buried under 14 inches of anxiety. I don't think their habit of writing out perfect rebuttals on Facebook translates to better conflict resolution in person.
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Asherlee10 posted...

pinky0926 posted...

As Addy said, the problem comes when people use social media as a substitute for human interaction, rather than a helpful addition.

Agreed.

Online interaction is either a helpful tool or it further cripples someone's social abilities.

What I do love about social media is I think it is bringing us closer to being One World. I can relate to someone half a world away from me with technology. It makes us all brothers and sisters on this planet and not just people so far away that they don't even seem real.

I agree. I have a friend from Australia who I see like a sister at this point. Known her since 2005 and we so desperately want to meet some day. We've had video chats, voice chats and all around fun together. She and I would make such awesome IRL friends if we could ever make it work.

I would point my camera out the window when it is sunny, she would bring her phone to the door and show it was dark there. It was so strange having it on camera live when it is daylight/dark on the other side of the world.

She and I are so close that we've seriously had a 10 hour video session once before.

She's the closest person I have to a sister. Easily.
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it obviously is. Every study says this.

Why would technology contribute to your social skills in any positive way when it eliminates all the physical elements?

I agree completely that physical interaction is very important and a necessity. I don't agree that technology is a large contributor to social phobia. It enables social phobias and it will allow it to get worse but you are applying the traits of the individual to the tool. The tool is just a tool. It can be used to further socialization and it can be used to further anti-socialization.

Online games are temporary fun and involvement if you use the tool to create temporary connections. The same tool can be used to create lasting and permanent connections.

The same can be applied to the concept of actually talking to people and taking in their features and hearing their voice and making eye contact. Technology allows you to do this with people all over the world whereas without contemporary technology you were limited by physical space. A perfect example is my wife whose family lives 8,000 miles away from her. With technology she can achieve face to face socializing whereas without contemporary technology she would be limited to collect calls and letters.

Technology is an amplifier and an enabler.
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I feel humans are just evolving into different ways to socialize.
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Does technology contribute to social phobia or does it expose us to socially inept people?

Like thirty years ago wouldn't we just not ever encounter people like MarthKoopa because they'd have no way to talk to us?
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agreed
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Technology is the only thing that got me through a very dark and lonely time in my life. It should not completely replace physical interaction, but it has been a huge positive for me. It hasn't given me social problems. It's helped me cope with them.
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Children probably shouldn't have too much of it. They've got the tablets and the phones and such at such a young age, and they grow up with it all, to the point that it replaces actual interaction with people such that they haven't got a clue how to interact with people.
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I think it definitely enables the shut-in types. When I was a kid those really introverted kids still went to afterschool groups like computer club or role playing game clubs etc where they were at least interacting with others.

hockeybub89 posted...

Technology is the only thing that got me through a very dark and lonely time in my life. It should not completely replace physical interaction, but it has been a huge positive for me. It hasn't given me social problems. It's helped me cope with them.

Say is assuming that because you can't socialize online that you'd be forced to socialize in person but ignoring the fact that more likely you'd just not socialize at all.
It's not as if shut-ins are an internet or new age phenomenon.
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DreadedWave posted...

hockeybub89 posted...

Technology is the only thing that got me through a very dark and lonely time in my life. It should not completely replace physical interaction, but it has been a huge positive for me. It hasn't given me social problems. It's helped me cope with them.

Say is assuming that because you can't socialize online that you'd be forced to socialize in person but ignoring the fact that more likely you'd just not socialize at all.
It's not as if shut-ins are an internet or new age phenomenon.

Dready, technology is damaging to people in that sense. You can make good use of it, but most people undergoing depression make the internet their home. A place where they will never physically even shake hands with someone. A place where you won't ever say "Bless you" when they sneeze because it goes unheard.

Everyone hiding behind the screens makes them more vocal in a text sense because there is no face to those words and there's a sense of "safety" with it.

Living life online, you miss out enjoying life's greatest moments. Overcoming fears is one awesome one. Going to the beach is something. Vacationing to locations far away to sightsee. Sure, you can do both, but technology is trying to remove motivation towards getting out there and doing so. Soon, virtual reality will be a more universal thing and no one will want to leave practically ever.

Mark my words. In the future, services like blue apron, peapod and all those other food delivery places will be big. Maybe not so much as to causing supermarkets to shut down, but people are just going to get fatter, lazier, more fearful, more anxious, more unable to do practically anything because they were born into an era where technology does it ALL for you.

That will leave humans with nothing. Jobs will be automaton. No one will leave houses.... and the more we press technology on, the more younger generations will adapt to having these so-called "benefits" in life. Just think about it for a minute. It's not unreasonable to think that far in advance. It might not be too too soon, but it will be the future, even if 100-1000 years from now.

It is a terrifying future.
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Sayoria posted...

Living life online, you miss out enjoying life's greatest moments. Overcoming fears is one awesome one. Going to the beach is something. Vacationing to locations far away to sightsee. Sure, you can do both, but technology is trying to remove motivation towards getting out there and doing so. Soon, virtual reality will be a more universal thing and no one will want to leave practically ever.

You assume that if they couldn't socialize online they'd do it elsewhere but it's most likely they'd still miss out on those things because social anxiety was not created by technology.

And the idea that people would never socialize in person simply because they can socialize online is preposterous. It's like arguing that people would never walk anywhere simply because cars exist.

The internet is an avenue that allows people who wouldn't socialize at all to have their voice heard, to make friends when they'd otherwise be entirely alone.
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I mean this same argument existed back when the TV was first introduced. That we'd all be mindless zombies and the social structure of the world would fall apart but nearly 100 years later we're all still doing fine.
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I'll eat my apple, you eat your orange.

You know we both have different views on things. This is something I wholeheartedly believe.
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DreadedWave posted...

I mean this same argument existed back when the TV was first introduced. That we'd all be mindless zombies and the social structure of the world would fall apart but nearly 100 years later we're all still doing fine.

Internet and TV are two different beasts. The internet is ever-expanding and getting so many add-ons to the point many people don't see a need in a reality. TV never gave that. Not even close.
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You do at least agree that for some people, technology hasn't had this effect right, and they'd be as physically out there with or without the internet?
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The point is, it's the same argument.

A lot of people overindulge and not just on technology. The technology itself isn't to blame.
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Tmk posted...

You do at least agree that for some people, technology hasn't had this effect right, and they'd be as physically out there with or without the internet?

Yes, but the internet has encouraged these issues and depression and social anxiety is probably worse than it has ever been.
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i'm really involved with technology and i'm doing just fine

if anything, videogames helped me make some longlasting irl friendships
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DreadedWave posted...

The point is, it's the same argument.

A lot of people overindulge and not just on technology. The technology itself isn't to blame.

It's not in the sense that you are what you make of it. It IS in the sense that people abuse it like high-hitting meds. You have one to ease the pain, but if you have too much, you face addiction that just pulls you in.
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I've actually noticed a decline in social interaction within online gaming itself over the past 6 or 7 years.
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Sayoria posted...

Yes, but the internet has encouraged these issues and depression and social anxiety is probably worse than it has ever been.

How can you be so sure such things are worse?

it's easy to think lots of things are worse in the present if for no other reason, simply that our awareness is at unprecedented levels with regards to what's in the world and happening.
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Tmk posted...

Sayoria posted...

Yes, but the internet has encouraged these issues and depression and social anxiety is probably worse than it has ever been.

How can you be so sure such things are worse?

it's easy to think lots of things are worse in the present if for no other reason, simply that our awareness is at unprecedented levels with regards to what's in the world and happening.

Because I was ensnared in that shitty trap. I still kind of am and recovering from a Hellish depression period. I seriously snapped in my room once before because it was always dark, I was always on my PS3, and I was draining my funds into 20-60 dollar video games. No degree. No guidance. No nothing.

I see people online dealing with exactly what I was back then, so I know what's going on. People need to step up and realize that they need to put the phones and tablets down for a good few hours every day. If you cannot do that, you have a problem.
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A. You're not talking about an antisocial society; you're describing more of an avoidant one.

B. None of this is based on anything other than your personal social maladjustment.
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But is any of that unique to technology?

Is that behavior not something people can and will do with anything they can? Could have been drugs instead, for example.


I see technology far more positively. At worst, it fills a need or compulsive people will inevitably have, a need it fills more safely and just better than past alternatives.

Few people truly ever live their life efficiently, and everyone's experience is going to be different. What was true for you, and what works for you, that's just you.
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Tmk posted...

Sayoria posted...

Yes, but the internet has encouraged these issues and depression and social anxiety is probably worse than it has ever been.

How can you be so sure such things are worse?

it's easy to think lots of things are worse in the present if for no other reason, simply that our awareness is at unprecedented levels with regards to what's in the world and happening.

I agree with this. Before people just didn't realize how many people were suffering with depression and social anxiety issues because you wouldn't see them in public and never knew they existed.
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JosefuJustice11 posted...

I agree with this. Before people just didn't realize how many people were suffering with depression and social anxiety issues because you wouldn't see them in public and never knew they existed.

Yeah... Odds are, almost every single person like that people here know of, they'd never know existed if not for our technological age.

People like that have pretty much been invisible for a long time. >_>
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a weeb saying to not be a nerd

k
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Tmk posted...

JosefuJustice11 posted...

I agree with this. Before people just didn't realize how many people were suffering with depression and social anxiety issues because you wouldn't see them in public and never knew they existed.

Yeah... Odds are, almost every single person like that people here know of, they'd never know existed if not for our technological age.

People like that have pretty much been invisible for a long time. >_>

Another thing to point out is that those people are the ones who end up becoming attention whores on the internet.

So even if they were able to overcome these issues, you probably wouldn't want to socialize with them irl anyway.
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Technology is simply a multiplier. It enhances both the positive and negative. I've definitely had moments where I think the use of pure online socialization is dumb, but I've definitely needed that crutch myself. It's ironic that you're posting about this issue on an online forum, sort of like the "nerd" argument on GameFAQs, in other words, you having this message on this platform is ironic in itself and in some ways shows you need the crutch too. Ideally you'd only discuss this with your IRL friends but you too feel the need to have some sort of socialization behind a monitor to anons, the same thing you're condemning.

The only thing I reject social media for is that it gives everyone some grandiose importance to themselves. People don't have to deal with other types of people because they never have to. I hardly ever feel the need to share much on social media. I just comment on other stuff as if it's another online forum or chatroom, but with people I actually recognize.
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josifrees posted...

I think you actually completely wrong. Technology is giving people more and more tools to socialize and it has given people that have absolutely no social skills the ability to communicate with people. You have less face to face interaction, yes, but social media platforms and places like this message board have greatly expanded the avenues of communication.

Also have to disagree with you on console gaming. If you are playing multiplayer games and are trying to be involved with the communities you will have way more friends and social engagement than you would in most irl contexts

You say all this while you are on a computer and not going out and meeting people.

Probably staring at your phone when you are around everyone, too busy trying to talk with people who are never there...
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I think Say just regrets meeting any of us :(
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weapon_d00d816 posted...

I've actually noticed a decline in social interaction within online gaming itself over the past 6 or 7 years.

Same. Back in the early 2000's everyone chatted with everyone they were gaming with or against. Xbox Live handed out headsets and everyone used them. Starcraft had a chat feature and everyone used it. Online gaming was as much a social activity as it was for entertainment.

Now, I feel like the corporate world has taken over online gaming since everything is just all about competitive gaming and aggressive stuff like that and nobody really talks to anyone anymore.
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DreadedWave posted...

The point is, it's the same argument.

A lot of people overindulge and not just on technology. The technology itself isn't to blame.

To be fair technology is just being shoved on people these days, you see it being forced on people everywhere now a days.
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I have been saying this for years about the depression part. Young kids these days don't go out on their own or with their friends to see the wilderness, or experience outdoor things anymore and it leads to this hollow feeling that makes them depresses or apathetic.

I see it in my own friends. We try to make plans to go hiking, or visit a town we've never been to before because they will be new experiences, but the plans always fall through because they would rather sleep the day away after being up all night gaming or on their phones.

So glad my girlfriend is adventurous and we go out together and do things we say we want to or I would probably be depressed too.
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Perascamin posted...

I have been saying this for years about the depression part. Young kids these days don't go out on their own or with their friends to see the wilderness, or experience outdoor things anymore and it leads to this hollow feeling that makes them depresses or apathetic.

I see it in my own friends. We try to make plans to go hiking, or visit a town we've never been to before because they will be new experiences, but the plans always fall through because they would rather sleep the day away after being up all night gaming or on their phones.

So glad my girlfriend is adventurous and we go out together and do things we say we want to or I would probably be depressed too.

My old group of friends also got like that, well most of them anyways. It's why we stopped hanging out and I started hanging out with different people. I hate it when people get all flaky and never want to do anything.
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DreadedWave posted...

I think Say just regrets meeting any of us :(

I made a post about meeting my "online sister" through the internet. I have regrets, but some people I know are not part of those regrets. I love my online sister just as much as I would a biological one.
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