Topic: "Nowadays the way people interact each other has changed because of technology. In what ways has technology affected the type of relationships people make ?
Has this become a positive or negative development ?
Undoubtedly, advancement in communication sphere is the greatest achievement of human mankind since last century. However, the fact that every technological development brings along some or the other detrimental effects has sparked a heated debate recently. Some people believe that, this advancement has made possible, effective communication among friends and relatives. Whereas, others, whilst may content that it can be a jinx to society.
The fact that youngsters are getting addicted to the social networking websites are the reason for parent’s concern these days. Youngsters prefer chatting with on-line friends on internet and neglect verbal conversation. Chatting with unknown friends can prove to have negative consequences. For instance, sometimes the youngsters can lend up disclosing personal vital information to strangers on on-line chat rooms, which serves as a base for hackers to commit cyber crime.
On the other hand, the development in technology has made communication cheaper, faster and of clear crisp quality. People can communicate with their friends and relatives irrespective to their location. Moreover, people are now capable of being in contact with their old lost friends. For instance, on social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, one can search their old friends through their common friends.
In addition, geographical distance and location which used to be considered as one of the colossal barrier to effective communication has now been broken by this swift speed of communication development. Parents can now see live streaming videos of their children staying far away from them, through video conferencing applications like Skype, Yahoo Messenger and so on.
To sum up, I would concede that people are now able to maintain better and healthy relationships with their friends and relatives, all thanks to communication development. Although, it comes with a price of acute negative effects on adolescents, but still such demerits outweigh its positive effects. Also, these negative effects can be easily curbed with parents guidance and their constant supervision.
TOEFL listening discussions: A conversation between a student and a university service representative