How do you imagine social interaction within 10 years, taking into consideration the impact of technology on human relations?
Within ten years, hardware and software technology will play a major role in social interaction. Technology will ease the ability for people to interact because they will be able to access information and content in real-time. This will improve cultural diversity by allowing people to understand the characteristics of other cultures. Social interaction has been made easy by social media technology because people can share their opinions through the Internet without physically contacting each other. This reduces community dynamics among individuals who have similar opinions. Consequently, people have more time on their hands for leisure and family bonding.
Some disadvantages are associated with reduced social interaction. For instance, people may lose their sense of confidence because they consider others are more successful. The ease in social interaction will disconnect people from the actual world and increase the risk of isolation, child abuse, dehumanization, and lack of privacy. People will not be able to interact properly anymore, due to their misplaced ability to interact face to face. Technology affects human relations negatively because it increases stress, reduces accomplishment, eliminates physical communication, and reduces confidence. If the trend does not change for the next ten years, people will become completely dependent on smartphones, tablets, computers, and other technologies.
The disadvantages of human interaction with technology are already visible especially in the way people socialize and communicate with each other. Presently, it is common to see friends hanging out and communicating more with their phones than with each other, which is a sign of a reduction in human-to-human communication. This behavior will follow a positive trend and people will reduce the way they directly communicate with each other because intense competition in the mobile technology industry causes companies to produce software that eases mobile communication. Reversing this trend will be a complex endeavor because human nature is bound to seek change and the current change is in the way people interact and share data.
I imagine that 2024 will be filled with a generation of intelligent, but foolish people. Technology will be as rampant as it is today but it will not eliminate the importance of direct human communication. One may be unable to accurately forecast what will occur in ten years but we are certainly becoming conscious of technology addiction and its effect on social relationships. So optimistically we will effectively eradicate the undesirable characteristics of technology and maintain the positive features.