谢振礼 托福范文: 更不友善 20181020
TOEFL Independent Writing
China 2018-10-20
Topic:
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? People were more friendly in the past than people are today. Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.
Essay: ielts360toefl@hotmail.com (RMB 60 WeChat fangsong1016 for TOEFL essays 2017-2018)
Relatively speaking, today’s people are not so friendly as people were a few decades ago. It is probably not that people are making active decisions to be unfriendly but that, between then and now, things have changed, making it less likely for people to be friendly. There are two respects which might largely explain this change: new neighborhood and new technology.
In one respect, these days the way neighborhoods in big cities are designed might have something to do with the decline in friendliness. An increasing number of people live in more sprawling gated communities, where they are literally living further from one another. According to a survey, half of urban residents lived in the principal metro areas in the 1950s, but today only 1 in 5 does. People have moved to suburbs, where living spaces have become more private and therefore less friendly. It is now when people are growing farther apart and talking less with people who appear to be strangers; and it was then when people were more friendly, knowing most or all of their neighbors by name and depending on one another much more. Referring to this change, the price modern people pay is that they tend to be suspicious of others and that they have a “fear” of strangers, even though this fear is usually unwarranted. All this might explain in part why people today are not as friendly as people were in the past.
In another respect, the development of new communications technology has also contributed to this change between then and now, from people being friendly to people being less friendly. It was then when there used to be a necessity to build friendly bonds among people who communicated with one another face to face. But it is now when people have more ways to communicate with friends and family members anywhere, without the need to be friendly with stranger-like people. People just prefer to spend their time texting, chatting on online forums, or even spending time alone in front of the screen for long hours, without having to try to be friendly with people near them. That is to say, via new technology, people are now able to be closer in touch with people they love most; and in most cases they do not have the absolute need or desire to be friendly with others who happen to be around. It was very unlike in the past when people were more friendly because they could not avoid it.
In conclusion, what with new neighborhoods and what with new technological devices, people have become less friendly than before. These two things have turned people in general into behaving differently regarding friendliness. And, for better or for worse, this change is likely to remain.
