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A
new term has been coined to describe the problematic attachment many have to technology:
“Nomophobia” is the strong and irrational fear of
being apart from
your phone. The website Nomophobia.com offers a test titled
“Are you a nomophobe?” (Parenteau, 2014).
Parenteau (2014) states that technology plays a vital role
students like you and me today. Often, it can be a superb assent to help
you in accessing information and brush up your work efficiency.
“Using
it too much, though, can prevent you from accomplishing
anything and
have harmful psychological effects.
Go ahead and use your favorite
devices for work and play,
just try to not get too attached ”
(Parenteau, 2014).
Try to look around, what are your friends doing when the
lecturers have not entered the classroom? What are they looking at when
they are waiting for the food to be served in the restaurants? What are
the students doing when they are walking back from lecture hall to their
college? No doubt, they are on their smartphones and electronic
gadgets.
The video on Modern Family reflects the true colors of the
global contemporary families, both nuclear and extended family. The
video postulated much realistic daily behavior by our society today via
the epitome of Claire’s family. To a certain extent, the story is
presented in a sarcastic manner to show that the society nowadays is
overwhelmed by the attachment on technology especially on the
telecommunication gadgets that they actually do not realize that the
rapport between them has been gaped.
The short story started when the mother of the family, Claire
was at the O’ Hare International airport. While waiting for the boarding
time, she grabbed her time to have a short interact with her husband,
Phil Dunphy. Before she left for the trip, he had a fight with her
eldest daughter, Haley Dunphy. Thus, she utilized her Mac Book to send
messages to Haley to ask if she is still mad at her.
Before she could have received any reply from Haley, she started
face chat with her husband to talk about their daughters. While having
face chat with Phil, she opens the online news to read on the latest
news. One current social behavior reflected here is the multitasking
behavior carried out by most of the people today. Not only that, people
is getting relied on the “To Do List” in our laptop, like Claire. In
fact, the dependence on this shaped some over rely on oneself over the
technology. In other word, we will forget on the routine with the
absence of our “To Do List” in the laptop.
On top of that, the video also shows us that the indulgence in
telecommunication devices that the Dunphy’s family that they are
ignorant of the others’ presence. The uncertain respond by the father,
Phil Dunphy when Claire was asking if Haley was at homes shows that the
family members do not even notice whether the others are around or vice
versa. Instead of spending time together, they spend more time on the
Internet and personal communication via the social media. For instance,
Phil does not even know that Alex Dunphy, his second daughter was
actually sitting right behind him at the kitchen for some time because
he was too indulged in the video game.
Not only that, the video reveals that the Internet creates a
virtual platform to express our emotion. Like Claire, she started to be
enraged when her message was not replied by Harley. She then assumed
that Haley who had a fight with her before this, was still mad at her.
She started to change her “tune” in the message by saying that it was
just a small matter and blamed Harley for being too dramatic. In this
case, we couldn't deny that Internet creates a chance for people to
express their emotion via words.
The word “DRAMATIC!!!” written in all capital words with three
exclamatory marks reflect Claire angry emotion and the sense of
appointing the anger to Haley. Worth mentioning, the sarcastic part here
is, during the fight, Claire even took the video when she was fighting
with Harley and that has triggered Haley’s nerve. In the older Chinese
proverb, there was a saying that, the ugly side or bad side of family
should not be published to the outsiders to protect the reputation of
the family. However from here we can see, the modern family has changed.
The value of a family has transformed.
On the other side, Alex Dunphy, the sister of Harley was also on
the face chat with her mother, Claire. She has become the middle person
between Claire and her Haley when the messages of Claire to Haley were
not replied thou they are delivered. As a student, Alex was requested
to send her essay writing on Netzshe culture through the Facebook Inbox
Message. This indicates that the parents monitor child’s work through
the internet, instead of Face-to-Face. Not only that, we can see that
Alex was actually neglected by Claire due to the fight between Haley and
Claire. While Alex was sending the essay to Claire, at the same time,
Claire was trying to stalk the latest updates on Haley using a fake
Facebook account named Brody Kendall since her daughter has not approved
her friend request on Facebook. She did not really pay attention on
Alex who was trying to explain on her paragraphs.
Another scene in this video is that signing up a fake Facebook
account to stalk others’ updates seem to be a trendy stuff nowadays
especially among parents and children. But let’s ponder, doesn't this
significant a gap of trust between children and parents? Why do the
children refuse to approve parents’ friend request on social networking
and at the same time why do parents need to monitor their children
through a way which provision of privacy take place?
Via this video of Modern Family, we found that this is a very
modern trend nowadays which actually brings us pluses and minuses.
In some of our readings, there are several arguments on the
attachment of students towards the technology. Taking the instance of
E-readers or some relevant devices designed primarily for reading
e-books which have taken the world by storm, which has explored onto the
marketplace in recent years (van der Velde as cited in Read, Robertson
& McQuilken, 2011), some purveyors of E-readers claimed that the
traditional books or paper books are “dead” and online technology is
leading the future. Hence, some researches are focusing on this to
examine the e-readings consumption and evaluation in the context of
academic readings (Chu as cited in Read, Robertson & McQuilken,
2011).
David et al. as cited in Read, Robertson & McQuilken, 2011
states that the premier model used to study the consumption of
technology among readers is the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The
study on TAM has received both applauses and criticism which includes
the neglect on the impacts on the emotion of readers in order to adapt
to the technology adoption. This model aims to see how the readers adopt
the technology and what emotion impacts they have in this.
Simultaneously, Yun (2013) has the similar study which he identifies and
understands the consumers especially for the sky rocketed high
popularity of digital gadgets. In his research he wants to determine the
tendency of relative obsolescence which involves the substitution of a
product regardless if the demise of its perfect functioning.
Many students utilize technology to do their schoolwork—to access
documents provided by teachers, to do research, to write papers, and so
on. To most, the right technological device is essential to getting
work done.
You see, technology has penetrated the students’ life. They just
can’t leave without laptop. In fact the use of technology on academic
can bring pros and cons. As stated below,
“Technology
use can also be a major hindrance to students,
however. All the quality
information the Internet can provide is useless
if it is lost among
page after page of outdated, misleading, or just
plain wrong
“information” turned up by your favorite search engine.
The Web is also,
of course, full of time-wasters.
Fall into the black hole of Facebook
or BuzzFeed,
and the hours you had meant to spend working
on a research
paper have vanished” (Parenteau, 2014).
References:
Read,
W., Robertson, N. & McQuilken, L. (2011). A novel romance: The
technology acceptance model with emotion attachment. Australasian Marketing Journal, 19(4), 223.
Yun, Y. (2013). Understanding
product attachment and expected product lifetime by extending
technology acceptance model (TAM) with product personalisation and
innovation diffusion theory (IDT). United States: ProQuest LLC.
