Podcast Script

The speaker, Yasin Mohamed, discusses the effect of smartphones on social interactions. Through literary research, it is found that smartphones have both negative and positive impacts on social interactions. Observations reveal that a significant number of people use their smartphones during social interactions, often excluding themselves from the conversation. However, observations have limitations, such as the influence of location and time. Surveys show mixed results, with some agreeing and others disagreeing on the negative impact of smartphones on social interactions. Overall, the research suggests that smartphones have a detrimental effect on social interactions. My name is Yasin Mohamed and I am here today to talk about smartphones' effect on social interactions. I have conducted observations, literary research, and surveys on this topic. Before doing any research, my opinion was that smartphones would have a negative impact on social interactions due to the fact that smartphones themselves are a distraction, lowering the quality of the social interaction. Starting off with the results that I gained from literary research, I read through four different articles that have done research on a similar topic. Not exactly smartphones' effect on social interactions at MTSU, but something similar to that. And they mostly came to the consensus that smartphones have a negative impact on social interaction. But they also talked about some of the positives, like how smartphones bring people together from different places all over online, facilitating actual social interactions that happen face-to-face. The field of study these articles are in were the field of health, field of economic psychology, and field of psychology. All of these articles talked about the impact smartphones have on social interactions, which is why I chose them. But they also conducted their own research, conducted their own observations, interviews, surveys, whatever type of method they used. And they all came to mostly the same conclusion, which is that they had negative effect, which supports what I originally had thought before doing any research. That doesn't make it true, but the fact that there are so many articles giving the same result gives that idea a little more credibility. Now moving on to observations, I conducted two observations in two different environments for a period of an hour. On average, I saw around 40 people during the whole hour, with only about 15-14 of them interacting socially. And of that 15 interacting socially, 9 or 8 of them were on their smartphones during the whole social interaction, or at least a part of it. There was also a lot of people that were just on their smartphones in general. It was a little bit less than half of the people that I observed that was on their phones. I also noticed that if the social interactions were more than groups of two and somebody was getting left out, they usually ended up going on their phones instead of trying to fit themselves in the conversation. They just put out their phone. And this happened repeatedly for most of the group interactions I saw. I just want to say that this data that gets gained from observation has some flaws to it. Observation has its own method, has its own flaws. One flaw for observation is that when observing something, the location and time that you choose to observe it changes what data you will receive. For example, if you were to observe how many people that were on their phones in a public area at the mall in two different time periods, let's say like middle of the day and right before it closes, they would give you completely two different data sets from how many people that were on their phones, which is why the time period is important. And let's say you were to go to the library instead of the mall, the library would give you another completely different data than what the mall would give. Using the data I gained from observation, it is safe to conclude that smartphones have a detrimental effect on social interactions. As all the social interactions I saw that had a smartphone involved hindered the social interaction instead of benefiting it. On to the surveys. Now the surveys were the weakest part of the data I gained as it relies on other people's responses, which could be easily falsified. I asked questions like, does your mobile device help or hinder your engagement during in-person social situations on campus? And if your device distracts you in social interactions and et cetera, questions like that. And the results that I got were really a mixed bag with the majority agreeing that it has a negative impact on social interactions. But there was also a lot of answers that said they didn't affect it at all, which really surprised me as I thought having a smartphone would at least leave a noticeable impact on the social interaction, whether it be a negative or positive one. But I guess not that there is a negative effect when smartphones are used in social interactions, which is what I originally thought. And that is all the results that I have gained from conducting the research. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the podcast and have a great rest of your day.