Digital environments that aid relationships and makes family grow

Recent trends in technology have increasingly brought about the erosion of boundaries between the physical and digital worlds; a convergence which implies connecting a large and varied range of physical elements to the digital world. A lot of benefits capable of bringing improvement in people's lives can be derived from such a world without boundaries. Bringing about greater efficiency and lots of new opportunities. However, creating value in such an environment would rely greatly on building relationships between people and information. In other words getting things connected. Sherry Turkle says, we have come to expect more in terms of relationships from machines and less from each other. We rely on technology to find friendship and trust while spending so much time getting connected.

The realization is that being connected, we are actually disconnected - from our friends, families and environment.

“an intelligent use of technology holds the key to achieving a sustainable society.”

We find friends put on the television which disrupts our conversations during a visit, at meetings heads are bowed down with hands texting away, kids stay glued all day to their video games not wanting to study, motorists are making and receiving phone calls while driving, on the streets, in the classrooms, at dinner, people avoid conversations by texting on their phones. Isn't it true that our use of technology just might be taking control over our lives and destroying our relationships?
It is pertinent to ponder how much true and genuine interactions we can create with the people around us who can bring real meaning into our lives. Advancement in technology and being in touch with a lot of people does not imply an improved quality of relationships. “The more intense the shared meaning, the greater the quality of human interaction attained “- Dr. Eugene Ohu, SOCTECH 2013. One of the benefits of spending quality time (devoid of interruptions from technological devices) in the family is that children learn how to interact with other people, how to communicate and how to show real-life empathy. Else, parents find themselves raising children who cannot relate to other people because, due to their unrestricted use of technological devices, they do not have enough interpersonal face-to-face interaction needed to develop proper social skills.

Technology provides diffusion of knowledge but rumors easily spread, it provides access to information but information become scattered, it provides avenue for engagement but there is lack of attention, it provides simplicity and efficiency but the result can be lack of productivity, it gets us closer to celebrities but far from the those near us, it provides transparency but with a sharing of intimacy, with technology you are always on but you get online addiction, you find identity but could be a strategic profile – Prof. Perez Latre, SOCTECH 2013. Besides these social and psychological effects, other risks like harmful advice, online harassment, illegal interaction, illegal contents, cyberbullying, and identity theft are directly associated with the use of online technologies. Some advice for avoiding these types of risk includes using firewalls and intrusion detection softwares, using a website reputation service to quickly check if the url is safe to visit, providing personal information only when the websites displays a locked icon(means it is secure)at the bottom of your browser,using a password that would be difficult for someone to guess and change it regularly,learning about a site’s privacy and security policies, knowing what is appropriate to share on social networking sites .... It suffices to say that an intelligent use of technology holds the key to achieving a sustainable society. The idea is not to abandon technology which truly can improve our lives but that while taking advantage of the benefits technology offers, we should be mindful of its downfalls. To this end we must adopt measures and good practices that will ensure we live in the kind of digital environments that can help our relationships and our families grow.

by Callistus Dike
cally352002@yahoo.com