Aaron D. Neufeld

Aaron D. Neufeld- BLOG #29- ‘Tech: Good or Bad? Part II’

Technology in the classroom, technology in the dorm room, technology everywhere! With all this technology and digital means keeping people indoors on their laptops and texting away, is there any more actual connecting and relationships forming? Does all this technology aid in connecting people, or in fact is it only alienating people?

While I used to strongly believe that all the technology was doing was acting as a relationship starter and a connector in disguise, I soon came to understand that this media can indeed help form relationships. I still believe that too much of anything is a bad thing. So I do believe that if you overuse the technology and spend all of your time on your phone and laptop and stalking out people on facebook, that it will indeed be detrimental. But if you use the media wisely, it can be incredible. I actually formed entire friendships from facebook! While some people think facebook is for friends you already have, I found it was more useful to me for friends I have yet to meet. Through facebook, I was ‘friended’ and learned about the person friending me. We spoke, and over time, we slowly built a friendship. From there, we took to video chats and soon after, we would be biking together, long distances—a common hobby we discovered about one another through talking online. Now I have real-life friends that stemmed from online social networking.

Ultimately, my belief still stands. If you over use any form of media, like over using anything in life, it won’t be good. But if you are able to use the media wisely, it can be very helpful in actually doing what it was meant to do—forming relationships. How you use the Internet, and how much you use the Internet, determines the difference between facebook friend and facebook stalker.