Imagine a world full of people, individuals who do not know each other, everybody busy with their own work, mechanically going through their daily routines. Would it be fun to be a part of this world? Whether we like it or not, all of us are just a stone’s throw away from it, we are already going through the motions of social withdrawal. With the advancement of technology, the need to have friends, companions, to be with near and dear ones, to be in knowledge of one’s neighbours is no longer there. The only friends people find themselves with all the time is Technology – be it in the form of a Cell Phone, a Computer; in the case of children we always find them glued to Video Games – and Money.

Social life as we knew not so long ago is on the verge of vanishing from our lives. People have started reclining into themselves; they do not entertain the thought of interacting with people. All like to be within themselves; spending time alone over the internet browsing obscure websites no one might have heard of. Rather than interacting with neighbors and people in their neighborhood, people like to just look up the internet and find the information they are looking for. To think of it, the Internet has made life so easy; you do not depend on anyone, you get all the information at your desk, but at what price? Isn’t it killing the society? Isn’t it killing the concept of Community Living, where people knew each other so well, they cared for each other, showed concern towards each other’s problems? It was like an extended family before. Now, there is a question on the existence of one’s own family. Separation is in vogue. Families are becoming nuclear. Husbands are getting separated from their wives demolishing the Institution of Marriage. Why? Spouses do not get time to spend with each other since they are busy browsing the internet, checking their “emails”. Children no longer feel comfortable staying with their parents, and they do not feel any kind of attachment towards them. They do not like any kinds of restriction on the time spent, how it is spent, either on cell phone chatting with friends or on the internet. Once they get old, they’d rather keep their parents in old age homes visiting them once in a while. Wouldn’t parents feel like prison inmates who are allowed meeting visitors coming to meet them for only a limited amount of time? This is not to blame the Internet for these ills in the society, but it sure is a factor.

Even at the workplace, the Employee-Employer relationship is no longer the same that used to exist before. Previously, both the employee and the employer strived to maintain long term relationship, the employee giving in his one hundred percent to the organization, the employer mentoring the employee to grow within the organization. Financial growth was not the only driving force behind the working of an organization. Substandard performances should not be rewarded by extending the employee’s term for a long time. You have to give him space and room for improvement. But nowadays, “Hire and Fire” is the rule of the game. At the drop of a hat, an employee is sacked from his job. All this comes down from the top management, and every boss passes down the buck to his subordinate. This leaves a small scar in the relation between the boss and his subordinates. There are always exceptions to any rule. Surveys have shown that the productivity of employees have gone down due to the internet surfing nature of people during work hours. This is one of the reasons for the increased attrition rate. Here again technology has come into the picture.

The Teacher – Student relationship has also gone through much strain of late. The respect that teachers of one or two generations ago used to have amongst students has of late dwindled. This can be attributed to two main reasons: a) the teachers’ behavior towards the students and b) their attitude towards the teaching profession. The teaching profession is not monetarily rewarding as other professions are. This has caused the teachers to abandon the ethics, and many of them are not interested in teaching students at designated schools/colleges. Rather, they would prefer taking private tuition of their own students at a higher price outside the school/college either privately at their residences or at other private coaching classes. Apart from this, nowadays, we hear stories about teachers getting involved in molesting their students, and on top of that, shooting the obscene acts and distributing either via internet or cell phones. The students have, thus have lost the respect towards their teachers.

The coming of Internet and its widespread use by the general public, the cell phones with all the savvy features of camera and wireless headsets has definitely added comforts to our lifestyle, but there are always two sides to a coin as pointed out above. We thus have to be very thoughtful about any new upcoming technologies, and apply our best knowledge to utilize them in a manner we deem it beneficial to ourselves.