Self-regulation is the ability to control one’s behaviors, emotion, and thoughts; this involves adjusting them due to circumstances and persisting on tasks even if one does not enjoy them. It is a very critical aspect of life since it forms the fundamentals of relationships and interaction among people.
Technology has revolutionalized self-regulation in a number of ways. In essence, technology has significantly affected the way people self-regulate their behavior. Firstly, people are not able to handle conflict face to face as many of the encounters in their life happen via technology. It, therefore, becomes very difficult for the people to make appropriate decisions when faced with such real life scenarios. Secondly, technology has affected people’s self-regulation in that; it has nowadays become very challenging to initiate interaction with others. The trend can be attributed to texting online and overusing of social media, making it hard for them to have an open. When faced with situations that require that one expresses himself/herself to unknown people, the individual often finds it problematic. Take the case of interviews, in any given interview one is required to converse with a group of unfamiliar persons. People whose self-regulation has been affected by technology may find themselves in a difficult situation. Hence, they begin to use nonverbal cues and put inappropriate postures and avoid eye contact.
On a positive note, technology has affected people’s ability to self-regulates in that it has enhanced virtual empathy and has helped in raising self-esteem. Through online communication, people can know about problems that others are facing, how to cope with the problems. In that process, they learn to deal with similar problems in their lives. There are various examples from the media that highlight the conflict between impulses and self-regulation. To start with, when news with extremely emotional news is being aired such as massive killings of people or a terrorist attack, they make a person acts on impulse. At that moment, one’s self-regulation is compromised. Also in some scenes in some movies may seem to promote drug-taking. This in turn persuades many people into the practice keeping aside their self-regulation. Also, various commercials aired can lead to such incidents.
According to the article, I chose on self-regulation, various relationships between technology and self-regulation are highlighted. In the article, people who are highly affected by technology tend to lose creativity and have poor relations with others (Technology for Self-Regulation, n.d). The article attributes this to compromised self-regulation in the face of real life situations. In brief, the article suggests that individuals who overuse technology are prone to problems related to self-regulation. For instance, such individuals may at times have poor decision-making, and they may be influenced by others. In conclusion, it is, therefore, wise to use technology in a intelligent manner to avoid compromising our self-regulation mechanism.