How Technology Affects Interaction

We began our research based on the interesting findings from the mini-observation session at the beginning of the unit. In this practice run, we were asked to observe dominance and submission in social interaction around campus and while doing this we noticed a pattern of technology use that we decided to pursue further. From here we started with the broader deductive research question asking how technology affects interaction. After the observations we settled on two other more focused inductive questions: how does technology affect interactions between two or more people in a prosocial environment (coffee shops, in this instance) and how do people depend on technology? We began collecting data with the four researchers each collecting one …show more content…
These compensation behaviors seem to occur when the person who is not using technology feels tension because the person shifting their focus back and forth is breaking social norms of conversation. If social rules are followed, both people would be engaged, fairly focused, and sharing intermittent eye contact to show that the interest in in a conversation is mutual. When these rules are broken, it appears that the person breaking them is fairly unaware and the other person fidgets, plays with their hair, taps their feet, stares out a window, or does some other behavior to appear committed in the conversation. In the span of a ten minute conversation two men exchanged the role of exhibiting compensation behaviors and using cell phones. The first man rubbed his beard, shifted continuously in his chair, looked around the room, and bounced his feet on a rung of his chair while his conversation partner intermittently chatted and looked at his phone. Other observations of conversations showed individuals twirling hair, leaning back and forth, looking around the room, and redirecting their attention in a multitude of other ways. These compensation behaviors are exhibited in slightly different ways depending on the individual, but in all the cases people …show more content…
People use the technology when alone to avoid the tension of feeling alone but become so dependent upon it that technology starts to become integrated into normal social interaction. However, because focusing on something other than the conversation during interaction breaks previously established social norms, tension is created. The tension in conversations with technology use can be seen through the compensation behaviors displayed by the person who feels ignored or forced into a submissive social position. In summary this means that by depending on a behavior used to eliminate tension, tension is actually being created where it otherwise would not