I think that technology is a tool that can influence human behavior in ways that are both positive and negative. When it comes to my overall opinion of technology, it’s not something that I can easily pin down. My connection with technology is something that I have found good and bad in, depending on how it’s used. There have been many times where I have really appreciated technology, and others where I wonder if I should regulate how much I use it.

I’ve read pieces from both Sherry Turkle and Sam Anderson where they expressed their own opinions and experiences with technology.  In “The Empathy Diaries,” Turkle explains how she was contacted by the dean of Holbrooke School, a middle school in New York. The faculty and staff of Holbrooke were concerned with the behavior that they saw among students. The faculty was worried that students were making acquaintances and superficial connections with their peers, rather than true friendships. Kids were excluding each other from group activities and seemed to lack empathy. When the Dean called a student to her office for excluding another student from a group activity, she claimed that she noticed a lack of empathy within the student. Turkle blames this lack of empathy on the increased use of phones among students. In my own personal experience, I was given a phone on my 12^th birthday, because my mom has always been extremely adamant about my safety. However, I never brought it to school or even downloaded any social media until I was 14. Turkle claims that rather than talking to each other in person, there is a “new form of conversation” through social media. However, this new form of conversation “is not doing the work of the old conversation” because “the old conversation taught empathy” and now “students seem to understand each other less” (Turkle 345). Face to face communication is extremely important to the mental health and wellbeing of all people but is particularly important to children. Childhood years are where people are most impressionable, and the experiences we have during this time shape the people we become. If we don’t receive proper communication and contact with others, it can have detrimental impacts on mental health and social ability, like the lack of empathy that Turkle is observing. Personally, I have excellent communication and social skills, maybe it’s because I controlled my social media and phone usage as a kid, or maybe it’s something completely different. This brings up the discussion of distraction. Social media distracts us from the real connections that are right in front of us. As Anderson points out in his essay “In Defense of Distraction”, we are “terminally distracted’ to the point where it is present in every aspect of our lives, not just in a school setting.