Hanne Pijpers

5/5 (2)

This month RTL launched a new TV-program called ‘Far away from Home’ (Ver van Huis). Four Dutch families that have very little interaction with each other in the Netherlands, retreat to live with the Amish, a strong religious community in North America. Besides their strong connection to the Bible and their pacifism, the Amish are characterized by their close family ties and sober lifestyle. They do not believe in modern technology and therefore avoid many of its devices. The use of such technologies is believed to increase inequality and jealousy among individuals, causing the current ties within the community to weaken (Diebel, 2014).

These characteristics are exactly the reasons why Angela Groothuizen (once a famous Dolly Dot) takes the Dutch families on a ‘trip’ to these communities. Among the Amish they are forced to live without smartphones, internet or television and come closer together. It makes me wonder: in what way is the usage of modern technologies related to the current family relationships?

Technology is omnipresent and we can not deny that today’s generations do not know a life without it. In general, the new technologies are associated with benefits that make our life easier. However, possible downsides are increasingly being addressed over the years. Within the realm of families, this evenly applies.

On the bright side: it brings us together

Thanks to modern technology, people can always get in touch with each other. Whenever we can not see each other physically, plenty of social media platforms still facilitates easy communication. This also has its effects within families. Applications like Skype and WhatsApp enable relatives that have to spent long time periods apart, to still feel very close to each other (Hallab, 2016). Some even argue that the rise of social media has made the relationships between children and their parents even closer, because former hierarchical ties have broken down. Additionally, the usage of these technologies within families adds to the feeling of safety (we can always reach each other in case something bad happens) and the efficient coordination of busy schedules.

On the dark side: it makes us more concerned with the virtual world than with the world we are actually living in

Whereas technology has the beautiful capability to make people feel close together regardless of physical boundaries, it can simultaneously tear them apart. This results from the substitution rather than complementation effect of technology with our existing communication patterns. Instead of face to face conversations, people can nowadays make a phone call just as easily. This brings down the amount of face-to-face interactions we have on a daily basis. Moreover, the increased use of technology limits the time we have available for each other (Mohabat, 2017). Research already even shows that children can feel lonely, isolated and angry in homes where families are always on tech (Williamson, n.d.).

Looking at my own circles, It is not unlikely that you spent most of the time at your parents on your phone or laptop, communicating with people relatively far away, while forgetting about the ones that sit right next to you. A fair conclusion seems that the feared modern technologies have made the world smaller in terms of global interaction, but wider in terms of close relationships. It turns out, the fear of the Amish may be pretty grounded!

References:
Diebel, M. (2014, august 16). The Amish: 10 things you might not know. USA TODAY Retrieved 21-09-2019 via https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/15/amish-ten-things-you-need-to-know/14111249/

Hallab, B. (2016, march 15) . Does social media bring us closer together or further apart? Retrieved 21-09-2019 via https://www.thesocialclinic.com/does-social-media-bring-us-closer-together-or-further-apart/

Mohabat, M (2017). Technology Taking Over Our Family Bonding. Daily Sun. https://www.daily-sun.com/printversion/details/204293/Technology-Taking-Over-Our-Family-Bonding-

Quinian, A. (2018, july 26). How technology and social media is undermining family relationships. The Irish Times. Retrieved 21-09-2019 https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/parenting/how-technology-and-social-media-is-undermining-family-relationships-1.3568291

Williamson, K. (n.d.) 5 Ways Technology Has Negatively Affected Families. Howstuffworks Retrieved 23-08-2018 via https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/family-tech/tech-effects-on-family/5-ways-technology-has-negatively-affected-families.htm

5/5 (2)

As a business student you have presumably heard of the term ‘Technological Dependence’. It is an established economic indicator, recurrently used to describe the asymmetric dependent situation of developing countries, as a result of the industrial revolution (UNCTAD Secreteriat, 1977). On a broader level, technological dependence can be considered the opposite of self-reliance (Anderssen, 1995). Here and now, the term has revived in the context of the digital world.

Over the last decades technology has become more and more involved with our daily lives. Though some are more cautious than others, all generations have currently embraced the digital life to some extent (Johansson, 2018). The extensive use of technology leads to the dependency of it, and not without consequences. Remember the last time you left your house without your phone? Or that time you felt very anxious because you thought you lost it? Exactly.

Accordingly, we spent more than three hours per day on our mobile devices (He, 2019). In a world where we constantly receive messages and notifications, it becomes increasingly different to isolate oneself. Our mobile phone confiscates a lot of our attention, distracting it from other activities such as socializing and studying. As my personal average screen time comes down to two hours and 26 minutes per day, I fit the statistics of a general homo digitalis. While I sit here writing this blogpost, my iPhone has lighten up about 12 times in the last hour.

Luckily, technology itself has facilitated multiple solutions for this form of technological dependence. And it appears in the shape of productivity apps. A productivity app is any piece of software that makes your job easier and allows you to get more work done in less time (Thomas, 2019).

Last year, I dowloaded the productivity app Forest. Forest is an online application that taps into the specific problem of procrastination by making you “put down your phone and focus what’s more important in life” (https://www.forestapp.cc). While you are focusing for a set amount of time, the apps grows you a virtual tree. When you leave the app within this time-slot, the tree withers. WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook etc. therefore will have to wait. Besides growing your own little virtual forest this way, the app has also partnered up with a real-tree-planting organization. When you have completed a significant amount of time focused, you can spent your virtual coins on planting a real tree. So while I leave my phone alone, I finish my assignment (win), my virtual forest gets fuller (win) and I’m saving up to plant a real tree (win).

While this app helped me do the trick multiple times, it keeps blowing my mind that I need my mobile device to stop me from using this same device all the time. While I have the feeling that I have taken back some self-reliance, it might make me only even more dependent on my device, doesn’t it? Is technology really the best we have in 2019 to fight our Technological Dependence?

P.S. This is not an add
P.S.S. How many trees will you plant this academic year?

References

Andersen, H. B. (1995). Technological Independence: The Asian Experience. Business History, 37(4), 138-141.

He, A. (2019, June 4). Average US Time Spent with Mobile in 2019 Has Increased. eMarketer. Retrieved from https://www.emarketer.com/content/average-us-time-spent-with-mobile-in-2019-has-increased

Johansson, A. (2018, July 25).We need to reduce our dependence on technology if we want to keep innovating. The Next Web. Retrieved from https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/07/25/we-need-to-reduce-our-dependence-on-technology-if-we-want-to-keep-innovating/

Stewart, F. (1979). International technology transfer: issues and policy options. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Thomas, J. (2019, August 20). The 9 Best Productivity Apps. Retrieved from https://www.getcloudapp.com/blog/productivity-apps

UNCTAD Secretariat. (1977). Technological Dependence: Its Nature, Consequences and Policy Implications. Africa Development/Afrique et Développement, 27-45.

So Close and Yet So Far Away: The Impact of Modern Technology on Family Ties

25

Please rate this