Gadgets blamed for making the world a shier place

Though we certainly feel as if we've had this discussion before, gadgets are yet again being blamed for an increase in shyness around the world. 'Course, we doubt you'd need any fancy degree to understand the cause, but a Harvard Business School researcher and psychologist has insinuated that the ease of communicating in roundabout ways (read: not face-to-face) has caused an increase in the amount of people that feel shy in public. Essentially, it was suggested that "technology is enabling us to opt out of difficult situations and causing people to become more insular," but hey, it's hard to argue how much easier life is with a little texting mixed in, no?

[Via The Raw Feed, image courtesy of ABC]

[ai4281 @ Sep 2nd 2007 12:50PM]

Although I can't disagree with the researchers, I cannot completely agree with them either. If one is shy when it comes to face to face human interactions, gadgets alleviate the pain by enabling that person to communicate without having to go through the ordeal. Shyness is often incurable. Besides, gadgets accelerated the world. From the phone to texting these days, you can talk to someone thousands of miles away or you can write to someone in the same network area in realtime.Also, I do not think that it is fair to blame gadgets of making the world a shier place. Some of these gadgets have been around for less than 10 years. It is hard to draw a conclusion from a technology that is still young and developing.
At best, their suggestion is just a prediction.

[Andy @ Sep 2nd 2007 1:48PM]

But this is about face-to-face communication. The younger generation has IMs and text messages, but most do not have any practical experience in actual conversations. Sure, the technology is new, but that doesn't mean few people are using it. IMs can be downloaded very easily, and text messages are a standard feature for every phone plan, not just Sidekicks.

[DarkAardvark @ Sep 2nd 2007 1:01PM]

hey, carrying a phone like that, i'd be shy too!

[whyshyguy @ Sep 2nd 2007 10:49PM]

Haha, I agree, I had that nokia (3360) back in 2001!!

[NovaLand @ Sep 2nd 2007 1:14PM]

I've never spoken with so many different people since starting using e-technology back in the late 80's. If it wouldn't been for it, I'd still be a shy computer nerd...

[McGinley @ Sep 2nd 2007 1:26PM]

I totally agree,I've had several conversations run along the lines of:

Person A - "So...have you broken up with your girlfriend yet?"

Person B - "No, I lost my phone last week...

[Andy @ Sep 2nd 2007 1:39PM]

John L. Locke wrote about that in his book "Why We Don't Talk To Each Other Anymore: The De-Voicing of Society." It was published in 1999.

[waiownsyou @ Sep 2nd 2007 1:56PM]

Well even Captain Obvious can tell you that's true. For a Harvard research group, you'd expect them to extrapolate that data and project that the cause of violent acts such as murders or thefts have sharply decreased in retrospect to the shyness within a reasonable ratio scale.

WTF HARVARD NEWBS!

[grjohnston @ Sep 3rd 2007 3:59AM]

You can't talk. You just spelt n00b with a w.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Sep 3rd 2007 5:50AM]

Captain Obvious!

http://media.urbandictionary.com/image/large/captainobvious-30189.jpg

[Paris K @ Sep 2nd 2007 2:00PM]

I think gadgets make it easier for people to communicate or at least start communicating. Teens these days exchange their IM address without any hesitation. Same goes for their mobile phone number. Back in the no IM and no mobile phone days people wouldn't exchange their home phone number so freely.

[hussein E Rawat @ Sep 2nd 2007 2:37PM]

Interesting... i remember that I use to really fancy the pants off of this one girl but i had no confidence in actually talking to her because i was afraid that i would end up with the dreaded 'cotton mouth' and would not be able to speak in normally so instead i typed the way i felt about her on my pda and plucked up the courage to approach and ask her to read my pda. She found it dead sweet that i felt like that about her but she said the timing was not right. So my point is that in some ways technology does help those that are very shy. when one my friends told her daughter about my antics, her daughter said that if someone asked did that for her, she would go out with them as she said "how sweet a way to ask someone!.

if technology gets you the person that you want, then where is the harm in using techonology? Not everyone is super confident socially speaking.

[711 @ Sep 2nd 2007 3:02PM]

Government ploy to create a more submissive society.

[oGMo @ Sep 2nd 2007 3:40PM]

What if they made the world a Shire place?

"In a hole in the ground, there lived a cybernetically-enhanced hobbitron. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with empty pizza boxes and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, businesslike hole with nothing in it to sit down on or eat: it was a hobbitron hole, and that means gadgets."

"And I assure you there was a mark on this door---the usual one in the trade, or used to be. _Hacker wants a good job, plenty of Excitement and reasonable Reward_, that's how it's usually read. You can say _Security Expert_ instead of _Hacker_ if you like. Some of them do. It's all the same to us."

[qwert @ Sep 2nd 2007 4:59PM]

yes, but will it blend?

oops, sorry, wrong thread :)

[ethana2 @ Sep 2nd 2007 8:55PM]

Much of the technology in use for communication will, yes. Part of why I don't like cell phones is because they can't. I'd rather have them be peripherals than their own devices. You know, light laptop on back, municipal blanket wifi, ekiga, bluetooth headset.

As for communication making us shier: so what? Maybe that's a good thing. It's harder to get in with the wrong crowd when it's easier to get out the second they freak you out. And besides, next to how many lives modern communication has saved, making some people a little shy is nothing.

[Tom @ Sep 2nd 2007 7:41PM]

It's worked the other way around for me, I got a job in a mobile phone shop and because I was trained to talk to every customer, now I'm a lot less shy in public and I'm able to approach and talk to anyone!

[huh @ Sep 2nd 2007 9:45PM]

about cell phones.

Actually, another researcher proved that "bureaucracy is enabling us to opt out of difficult situations and causing people to become more insular."

[Jagannath A @ Sep 2nd 2007 11:02PM]

In a new followup to this study another researcher 'blames humans for creating gadgets' ;)

[Steve @ Sep 3rd 2007 2:54PM]

Man , I do not want to know what these people are thinking when they come up with these dumn studies. What's next blame God for creating Humans? There has always been shy people but when when did these idoits find out that I can just see them walking the street asking people what time it is , "He looks shy and he has a cell phone" I mean just because the person that they found is shy and had a cell phone , don't blame the phone. Blame THE PARENTS FOR GOODNESS SAKES!!!!!

[gearsx @ Sep 3rd 2007 6:55PM]

Point?

[Trent @ Sep 4th 2007 4:23AM]

With a phone like that I would hide away too.

[Tony @ Sep 4th 2007 2:32PM]

that image must be like 4 years old.....ah the good ole green and black screen....i miss the snake game, that game should be federally mandated as an included game on all phones!!

[Cristian L. @ Mar 17th 2009 6:46PM]

What they do not understand is that before this plethora of communication, shy people don't battled their own shyness in a jihad way, they simply communicate less.