The way many people interact with each other has changed

IELTS Writing Task 2 with sample answer.

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Nowadays the way many people interact with each other has changed because of technology.

In what ways has technology affected personal relationships? Has this become a positive or negative development?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

You should write at least 250 words.


Model Answer :

Throughout history, man has always served the ways to improve the quality of life. From telegraph to today’s modern cell phone, we have always found the better ways to communicate to each other. A concern has been raised, however, whether or not these technologies are contributing to interpersonal relationships or actually hindering them? The answer is both, I think.

To begin with, the positive aspects of technology are accessibility, networking and communication. Technology makes it easier is first communication. With technology, we have accessibility to connect with people instantly at our fingertips. A very good example here is internet, an amazing tool for communicating. Through the internet, two or more people are able to communicate with each other from entirely different locations in real time. The benefits of this technology include instant communication with family members in abroad, online business meetings, online shopping and so on.

However, on the flip side, there are negative impacts as well, like distraction, health issue and technology dependence. As I have already said that now we are able to communicate whenever we want wherever we stay. Ironically, by being connected, we are also disconnected. Our social behaviors have taken a toll since we decided to place a screen in the middle of our interactions. While busy on our devices, the world gets our divided attention. It is where face-to-face communication is interrupted the moment we turn our attention to a cell phone screen. Furthermore, we start our day by checking emails, skimming the latest headlines, and then posting something ambiguous. Then, we spend the rest of our day texting, tweeting, facebooking, browsing, and sharing. These habits clearly manifest the technological dependence resulting in addiction.

To recapitulate, reality does not permit us to go back to the way we communicated fifty years ago. There were some inconveniences in communication back then that our technological advances have solved. Like any useful tool, to make technology serve us well requires the exercise of good judgment, is all we need.

Idea Generation for this essay:

Ways in which technology affects personal relationship:People visit relatives

  • Technology to some extend has reduced the social interactions among people.
  • On the other hand communicating people who stay far away was quite inconvenient but technological advancement has reduced this barrier.
  • People visit relatives and friends less often as they can talk and communicate them using cell phones, social networking, chatting software etc.
  • Because of technology people nowadays make friends globally and that in a sense has improved the way we communicate.
  • The communication frequency has increases rapidly while the cost has dropped dramatically.

Positive development of this trend:

People have friends

  • Cost of communication has dropped significantly. Calling a relative in a foreign country used to take a large amount of money in old days but this has reduced to a very minimal cost nowadays.
  • Most of the people use smart phones or cell phones and they are always available in a sense.
  • People now live in a global village and have friends from many countries via social networking. This in terms of national bonding and understanding is a very positive trend.
  • The communication skill and cultural exchange are two important aspects of job success and many young people have these skills because of the technological advancement and changes in the way they communicate.
  • The technology has reduced the communication barrier and offers a very quick and flexible ways to communicate.
  • People nowadays are more aware about the good causes and can protest any bad thing done through the social networking. This is terms of democracy is a very powerful tools.

Negative development of this trend:1. People have become less social

  • People have become less social and personal bond seems like decreasing.
  • People are becoming addicted to the social networking and that has negative aspects among young students.
  • People have become more materialistic that being personal friends.
  • Young people are spending too much time on these technological deviced that they should have been. This in terms of physical and mental health is detrimental.
  • People no longer spend time writing letters and prefer sending emails. This is terms of personal touch and feeling, lacks the strong bonding among people.
  • People use too much fake information on their social profile and that might deceive many people and the chance for fraud thu8s increase.