REACTION PAPER

DEL ROSARIO, ERICA CLAIRE Q. 1A4

It is time to express our opinion about “Connected, but alone?” delivered by Sherry
Turkle at the TED Talks, year 2012 that tackles the situations and consequences of the
digital advancement such as phone to the present time and how our communication has
been sacrificed on achieving the digital planet we have dreamed of. I strongly agree to
the realizations that the author have shared throughout the talk, which I do believe needs
to be furthermore discussed.

Since technology has been brought into existence, life has been easier among us,
an advantage. However, there is always been a disadvantage in everything that was
developed. It is true that the communication is one of the beneficiaries of technology,
phones connect us to the people thus making being together while not being together.
Similarly, when we gather with our close friends or families, we tend to be being together
while not being together in a way that we use our phones instead of talking to the people.
I agree to this idea because I have already experienced this kind of situation wherein, we
are gathered, we are together in a room but all of us are busy checking out our social
media accounts on our phones without thinking that time is running out, a regrettable
moment. It is true that we also use technology to escape affliction, to divert our attention
from the pain which is I find absurd. We use technology as an excuse because we want
to take over the situations, we want to control the ideas that might come out if we talk
face to face making us afraid of creating conversation in real time. What saddens me the
most is that we build a different world, we build a different us, we build different
relationships and status using our phones that is sometimes opposite to the real us. We
failed to learn other people and culture but contradicts to the fact that we want to be
heard.

Continuous development of technology can be devastating and depressing in my

opinion, because it is making us believe that everything will be solved when connected
and teaches us to treat our phones as a cure to the problem. Furthermore, we turn to
technology to help us feel connected in ways we can comfortably control when, ironically,
the truth is that we are not so much in control. (Turkle, 2012)

Above all, technology is conducive and has a lot of contribution yet, we need to
realize the consequences that it has brought. It is saddened to think that we need to
sacrifice things in order for us to achieve the life we wanted, the life we dreamed of.
Socializing and communicating can be maintained at the same, all we need is a proper
management and engagement of technology to lead us back to our real lives.