Esther+Han+RP+Post+2


 * 1)  How has the use of modern technology and internet affected the social skills of people today? And to what extent?
 * 2) "Technology is Destroying the Quality of Human Interaction"
 * 3) Melissa Niles, Arts & Entertainment Editor (The Bottom Line: UCSB's Student-Run Newspaper)
 * 4) <>
 * 5) I have accessed this source on a college newspaper website on May 22, 2014 in my house
 * 6) SOAPSTone:
 * Subject: Technology, social interaction, negative effects
 * Occasion: Contemporary society and rapid technological advances
 * Audience: College students attending UCSB, AP Lang students doing a research project, anyone interested in technology and it's effects on society
 * Purpose: Persuade readers that technology's effects on social skills of people today are negative
 * Speaker: Melissa Niles, students of UCSB
 * Tone: persuasive, concerned, anecdotal
 * 1) Communication through means of the overuse of technology is becoming a technological detachment that is beginning to destroy the once meaningful interactions people had face-to-face. Although technology can help people communicate long distance and help people stay in touch, it defeats the meaning of quality in the relationships people have with each other; for example, Facebook "friends" are not actually all friends who you are close with and can trust. Instead of spending time text messaging and chatting on social networking sites, people should spend more time together and not rely so much on technology for preservation of relationships that actually matter.
 * 2) The author's main thesis is that technology is gradually starting to hinder the true meaning and importance of social skills and interactions face-to-face, and people should not be so heavily dependent on technology to help maintain friendships.
 * 3) I am generally convinced by Niles' treatment of this topic; she successfully persuades me to believe that social interactions are an absolute necessity for everybody's lives. I like the way she shows the large distinction between social network friends and actual friends (people you spend time with in person and trust in). I also am convinced by the way she emphasizes the importance and valuable intangibility of spending quality time with people in person.
 * 4) <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Key sentences or passages:
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"disconnecting us from the world around us, and leading to an imminent sense of isolation in today’s society."
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"people are actually limited to a certain number of stable, supportive connections with others in their social network: roughly 150."
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"We need to start prizing the meaning of quality in our connections, not sheer quantity."
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"That person becomes an important existing human connection, not just someone whose disembodied text voice pops up on your cell phone, iPad or computer screen."