Truth behind Technology

Context: I am Micayla Aduhene, a college freshman, majoring in nursing at Georgia State University. In this day and age, technology has replaced human contact and interaction. Instead of talking to one another, people prefer texting or communicating via social media. The space I am analyzing, a Taiwanese tea cafe called Kung Fu Tea, is a cafe near Georgia State’s campus where a majority of the customers are students.  I chose this space because many of the students come from diverse backgrounds, so I would be able to analyze different types of people and see how they relate back to my topic. I chose this topic, technology’s effect on human interaction because I have noticed from first-hand experience how technology is slowly taking the place of traditional human interaction especially since the rise of social media.

The cafe has a distinct smell of wood, tapioca, and honeydew. The warm, musky autumn air breezes through the room as the entrance door opens and closes. The door swishes back and forth as the clock strikes one when students and adults begin to enter the well-known cafe, Kung Fu Tea. Customers swarm in during their lunch breaks to purchase the Taiwanese tea drinks the cafe is so known for. Students come in with their friends and adults with their coworkers. Those who come alone are glued to their phones as they walk in, barely making eye contact with anyone or anything. It isn’t until they reach the front of the line, they look up with glassy pupils from their screens and recite perfectly scripted orders to the baristas.

The barista, a young adult who goes by Mai, stands behind the counter that separates her from the customer. She begins her shift extremely cheery, with jittery legs and a smile that almost reaches her ears. The first customer approaches her, and she excitedly asks them how their day went, what they would like to order, and their name. The customer looks up from her phone once Mai finishes speaking, and with little to no interest, the customer responds with “Good”, her choice of drink (green matcha tea boba with light ice), and her name. After that exchange is over, Mai asks the customer for their form of payment and throws in a little joke. The customer ignores the joke and just hands her a vibrant red card. Mai sullenly takes it, swipes, hands it back along with a receipt to the customer. As soon as this is over, the customer walks away to wait for her drink all while looking back to her phone. This “routine” occurs several more times: Mai excitedly asks the customer about their day, their name, and their order, most to which answer with little to no interest. Once the order is complete, they walk away and wait for their drinks to be prepared all while staring at their phones. After a while, Mai’s initial bubbliness fades due to the lack of social interaction she’s receiving. She just asks for their name and what they’d like to order.

A customer walks into the cafe with her bookbag strung high on her shoulders, her phone in hand and surveys the room. Around this time, many people were in the cafe doing work or enjoying their drinks. After surveying the room, she puts an AirPod in her left ear and begins to swipe around her phone aimlessly. She then waits in line to order. Once she reaches the front of the line, she quickly, without even giving the barista a moment to speak, gives her order along with her name and hands the barista a card. The barista doesn’t look stunned and treats this as an everyday thing. All she does is smile at the customer once she hands back the card. The customer turns around and returns to swiping aimlessly on her smartphone until her purple drink with tapioca is ready. She sits down by a white marble table with her legs crossed, and her eyes captivated by what is on her screen, completely tuning out the world around her. Once her drink is fully prepared, the barista calls her by her name, Kayla, and she makes her way to the cash register, eyes trained on her phone yet once again. She reaches the front, grabs her Taiwanese tea drink and makes her way out the door. Not once did she look up from her phone and neither did she thank the barista for her drink.

From the time Mai began her shift, her mood changed from extremely giddy to desensitized and discouraged. Her actions when handling the drinks were very nonchalant as she took names and orders, which can be connected to how the customers were treating her as she prepared their drinks. This lack of social interaction only causes more division, separation, and seclusion from the real world. Despite all the positive aspects of smartphones, there is an arguably equal negative impact on society. People are becoming more and more secluded from the real world and have turned to virtual reality on the other side of a screen. 

This space was chosen to show how technology, specifically smartphones, affects how people interact with one another. These days, people are less interested in social interaction and are more focused on what their phones have to offer them. People are losing basic social skills which inherently can affect both work and school life. Those mainly targeted are teenagers since they are the ones that grew up during the rise of smartphones and social media. This lack of social interaction and support has pointed back to many negative health effects including depression, anxiety, poor mental health, and etc. As of right now, all of these are at an all-time high for teenagers in this decade of social media and technology. About 20% of teenagers suffer from depression before they reach adulthood, and the percentage has only increased since social media has emerged. It hasn’t been officially proven that these are definite effects, but what we do know for a fact is that technology is affecting the quality of traditional human interaction.

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