Good manners have shifted over the past generations from “caring for others” to “pleasing ourselves.” With pleasing ourselves comes a loss of respect for one another and tis is a growing problem. People no longer take time to interact with one another due to our fast paced high tech lives. We are not the courteous and thoughtful people we used to be. This research paper will explain how our manners have changed and why. In today’s society email, IM and text messaging is our main source of communication. This technology is slowly is affecting the way we interact with one another decreasing the amount of time in face-to-face conversation. People text while driving, then flip you off when you beep at them for not paying attention. Then you have the people who talk extra loud on their cell phone in public and they get mad at you when join into their conversation. If they weren’t talking so loud you wouldn’t have joined in. Nowadays a simple courtesy smile or hello might go unnoticed because of our inability to look away from the cell phone, lap top or Ipod. Making the person who gave the smile or hello feel you were being rude, when you were just preoccupied. Most of us today are way too concerned with pleasing ourselves to lend a helping hand. Holding a door open for someone used to be a natural gesture, now it’s can be considered a tedious task. People are more worried about how helping someone will affect their own life, will it put them a little behind schedule or somehow make them late for a dinner? What happened to common courtesy and the reward of just being able to make someones day? Television also has a big influence on our manners can because the media gives praise to bad behavior and screw ups. Making adults, teens and children think acting rude and obnoxious will earn them popularity amongst friends and peers. When all it really does is make them look and sound foolish. Family talk at the dinner table is being
Cited: Sources http://definingmanners.com/etiquette.html http://wvflipside.com/march2007/n4.htm http://www.buzzle.com/articles/texting-while-driving-statistics.html http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html