PROPOSITION: MANY PEOPLE SAY THAT MODERN COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IS HAVING
NEGATIVE EFFECTS TO SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS. PROMPT: TO WHAT EXTENT DO YOU AGREE
OR DISAGREE?
TS 3:15pm TF 3:50pm
Answer:
Many would argue that urbanized way of communicating has drawbacks to social relationships. I strongly
agree on this statement and in this essay, I will cite some examples and ultimately give my opinion.
Firstly, one of the reasons that modern technology has negative effects on communication and
relationships is because it affects an individual's ability to communicate properly. This is because a
person may rely too much on technology these days to send their messages to other people. However,
technology could be prone to technical errors and one such example is the use of instant messaging
applications like sms, viber or facebook messenger (capitalize all these Stacy). In addition, these
applications do not have a spelling or punctuation checker which can correct mistakes that people might
commit due to several factors like going through a rush and this could affect on how a sentence is
constructed and delivered. As a result, the receiver might misinterpet certain messages in a different
meaning than what is actually intended by the sender. If people depend too much on instant messaging,
their sense of communication is lost for the reason that personal communication may also involve
conveying certain emotions to other people like sadness, happiness or excitement which is essential in a
social relationship.
Secondly, there may be no time for the family members to talk to each or catch up together as a family
which is also an important factor in maintaining social relationships. This is because, family members may
take each other for granted since they may simply think that, with technology everything is possible. For
instance, should they have an important matter to say to another family member they may simply make a
call or text them. Therefore, their social relationship is affected because they do not have the time to bond
together as a family and enjoy mere things together like having a nice conversation over dinner or go for
a walk and talk at the same time. If family members rely too much over technology as a means of
communicating their essence of family is reduced because they may missed out on certain important
aspects of discussing important matters together as a family like, providing solutions to problems or
misunderstandings or giving support to one another; which may be possible by reaching out with one
another, have a real conversation and find (“finding”) time together as a family.
Therefore, modern innovations on technology has negative effects on social relationships although it is
beneficial and while it is useful in our evolving world, however, the real essence of communication should
be maintained that is by having a real sense of personal communication in person.
Comments: Karla, this question prompt was really tricky. Unlike the first
one, you knew exactly the bullets to answer. The very keywords were in the
question prompt itself. But for this next one, it suddenly becomes very broad
and all-encompassing, and you are suddenly challenged to come up with the
right bullets for this. That’s why I really like longer question prompts, rather
than really short ones such as this.
Notwithstanding this difficulty, I’m still sure your output scores a Band 7
here, in an effective one-sided approach that fully elaborates on two precise,
correct, and important points.
To improve the output further, maybe what you could cite is that there is no
more intimacy today, because personal communication is certainly very
personal, where one can see the sincerity in the other person’s eyes, or the
music in a person’s intonation, or the warmth of a touch, whereas in modern
forms of communication, everything is so cold and distant.
Other, more relevant bullets to cite here include the problem where modern
communications have prevented people from actually engaging in
substantial talk. In social media for example, there really is a culture of fun
and trivia there, and people don’t actually talk at length and in substance
there. So our friends in social media can actually be deemed as ‘fair weather’
friends alone.
Maybe another bullet I would inject is to cite the culture of hate that
propagates online. You can see this in Twitter especially, where people can
easily tag anybody and everybody with all sorts of hate messages. This is
especially true towards celebrities and politicians, and never before has this
happened to humanity. Celebrities and fans now have a tenuous social
relationship, at best. And can you imagine if people can shame celebrities
online, what more can they do to unknown individuals and ordinary mortals
like us? It’s a truly vicious world nowadays, with the advent of the internet.
Of course, related to that, there is the evolution of the troll – fake accounts
whose main purpose is just to propagate lies, hate, fake news, and the like.
That’s why social media channels have become vehicles for all sorts of
negativity. The relationship between politicians and their constituents have
never been the same since. Indeed, some people do say that the internet is
now the new toilet. It’s full of shit hehe.
So if the topic prompt on modern communications comes about, do just
remember some of these bullets ha, to add to the bullets that you used
here. This question prompt does appear quite often in IELTS.
