My best friend and I JohnCharles were really close until he moved away to a far away land of Colorado, but luckily the day before he moved he added me on Facebook. Because he added to Facebook the day before he moved away we still talk and keep in touch today. America has been debating for years if are newer technology like the internet is effecting use in a bad way or a good way, but the truth is that technology increases social skills because it helps people to get connected.

Technology like internet in today’s life helps anyone get connected at any time. Every day people use the internet to keep up with friends on social networking websites. For instance, “The internet can make it easier to keep in touch with friends.”(Coget 1) With the help of the internet people can still talk to each other even if they live far away. Also “With the internet, information can be transmitted and received with ease at any time of the day to and from any number of friends.”(Coget1) Friends at any time of the day and all around the world can instantly send pictures or videos to each other. With out internet this wouldn’t be possible. And not just friends would benefit from instantly transmitting information across the world. Think about all of are businesses today that have to send stuff for work over seas at a super high speed. They are not going to have the time to go all the way to another country to give someone paper if the can just shoot it to them over the internet.

Another thing is that people think is making people less social are iPods. People think that just because they have headphones I their head mean they don’t want to talk to people and just to completely ignore them. This is not the case at all though. Listening to music is very soothing it helps relax and just enjoy the moment. For instance a sophomore that attends the University of Georgia says, “Music deepens the experience of walking through the world, rather than detracting from it.”(Harris 1) Now day’s people are making listening to iPods a social event so no one can say that listening to iPods makes you less social. Like this for example, “Once a month, Playlist hosts iPod DJ nights at a London bar.”(Harris 1) iPods are bringing people together. People are socializing with other people at somewhere like DJ nights, and they are listening to their iPods at the same time.

After all that technology is helping people there are some people that are still against it. They think internet is depriving people of their social life’s. For instance, “The appropriately named HomeNetproject studied a sample of 169 people in Pittsburg during their first year or two online. Data showed that as people in this sample used the internet more, they reported keeping up with fewer friends.”(Alfonso 1) People like this are just doing whatever they can to prove internet is wrong, but they made a very big mistake. When they are trying to prove that internet is bad they are using logical fallacies. Alfonso told me that they only used 169 people in his survey, but you cant do that because that is selective sampling. The only way you are going to prove that technology is bad is if you survey every single person in the world, and I don’t see that happening any time soon. Some people also think that people that use the internet are attended all the social functions that people go to that don’t use the internet. Internet users are not attending as many parties, sports events, culture events, and are not socializing as much. In this study though they used 5388 non-internet users and 757 internet users. (Nie 1) They can’t say non-internet users do more than internet users when they surveyed over two times more non-internet users than internet users. This is a perfect example of selective sampling. This source is not valid because they didn’t use the same number of people in each group.

People also think that when you see somebody with headphones in to not talk to them just walk past them, and ignore them. For instance, “Visible from a good distance away, white earphone signal one thing to most people: don’t bother trying to talk to me.”(Song 1) This isn’t true. Just people have headphones in has nothing to do with not wanting to talk to someone. When I put in my headphones in at a public place it is usually, because I am out of my comfort zone and I just want to do something that is relaxing like listening to my iPod. When you see someone with headphones in at a public place means they are probably they are really shy and you should go and try to talk to them.

Internet is connecting people everywhere around the world, and is also helping business people with there long distant customers. People are now connecting people through iPods. Technology is a sweet thing and it is helping people all around the world. These crazy people that are against technology are crazy. Their main goal is probably to try and shut down the internet and things like that forever, but technology is forever growing so this won’t ever happen. Technology is helping people get connected all over the world. This topic is controversial but all you technology lovers lets stand together to keep growing in technology for the rest of are years. We want to keep all of this great social networking sites right. So lets make sure they are here forever. If you could leave with one thing from this paper just remember that technology increases social skills because it helps people get connected.