Issues: Technology and Manners – Misunderstanding Needs Leads to Rudeness

This week on the Pine Needle three students consider the state of manners in our culture and consider the question, Is technology ushering in a new era of rudeness?

by: Eric Mayforth

In today’s world, technology is getting better and better. We seem to use it the most with countless hours on Facebook, texting our friends, experiencing virtual lives online. Now the question of when is the right time to whip out your cell phone is up for contention. Ultimately, technology has greatly affected what our mannerisms have become, and there is always a right and a wrong time to use technology.

Technology is a great way to improve our lives. We get to live safer, get things accomplished quicker, and are able to enjoy our lives better because of it, most of the time. Homes are built stronger, computers are getting smaller and faster, and if we want something to work for us, there is usually an app or a program to do it. We are able to know what is happening around the world within the hour. Overall, it makes our lives easy to the point that we think technology is a necessity.

Many places in Africa, a man may never see a movie in 3D, talk on a cellphone, or drive a luxury vehicle. Yet that same man will most likely enjoy his life just the same. In America, you take away some 10 year old’s cell phone and she thinks that she is going into solitary confinement. We think that if the majority of the people have it, we need it. Yet we can still get to work without a car, talk to someone without a cell phone with millions of apps, or get our math homework done without hotmath.com. We have forgotten the difference between a need and a want.

The way that a teenager just whips out their cell phone in class and leaves reality and enters the virtual one is just rude. Why is it that instead of talking to the person right next to you, you text someone from a distance? I feel that technology has affected the way we know each other. We know the people that we text better than the people that sit next to us every day. When given the opportunity to get to know someone we don’t know, we should utilize it. In that moment, we shouldn’t just text someone we do all the time, because in doing so we are saying to everyone that we do not want to be there, and that is just rude.