Allison Graham’s TED Talk How social media makes us unsocial really expressed a lot of my feelings about technology and social skills. I’ve noticed that more and more people are unable to hold casual conversation or find it weird that you even try to hold one. If there is someone else near me that is just sitting there, I enjoy and often times attempt to engage in conversation to pass time and be polite. But there are times when I can clearly see they’re uncomfortable  with interacting with a stranger, even times when my own siblings seem like they literally rather be doing anything else than telling me how their day went or hearing how mine was. This lack of interaction or poor quality of it tends to make people feel alone which Graham beautifully illustrates towards the end of her talk that  “… we would all live life better if we had hands to hold rather than keys to click.” (11:09, 2014)

And although it seems backwards, this loneliness tends to push people more towards technology. Graham mentions that “The more technology divides us, the more we demand from it.” (3:28, 2014) Because we’ve lost and weakened our skills to interact with others we run to social media to fulfill our needs of a sense of community and validation. We no longer rely on loved ones to be shoulders to lean on, we instead have traded in phone calls with someone who cares for us for posts for those who barely know us to read.

How social media makes us unsocial [Video file]. (2014, November 10). Retrieved October 13, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5GecYjy9-Q&ab_channel=TEDxTalks