Dining Halls Observation

I continued my observations on the dining halls on Thursday march 3 and Friday march 4 at Harcombe and Schilletter dining halls during the afternoon. I came in like any other day and started to observe people. I kept on seeing the same isolation between people. I noticed that most people act polite but this is just something automatic that comes out of everyone like saying hello or thank you but with no real meaning. Again even for these greetings the phones or some other type of distraction were involved that made people have little visual contact and then just walk away. So this was just another example of how the behavior of people is affected by technology.
On Saturday, March 4 and Sunday, march 6, I visited Harcombe dining hall at about 7:00 PM. This was my last weekend of observations and I focused on something different this time. I noticed that all of the dining halls have several televisions, but out of all of the people that attend these dining halls a very few amount actually watch the

television. Most of them are using their devices or talking to other people. It seemed pointless to have so many televisions if a very small fraction of people use them. I came to the conclusion that these objects, even if not used so much, give the place a sense of quality and are used to make the place more attractive to other people. So as time has passed these items have become more common, and people have become used to them and it is like a normal rule to have a lot of televisions throughout the dining halls even if some of them never get any attention from the people that come in.
After making all my observations I could now come to conclusions about the different cultural rules displayed in the dining halls.

My first observation was about the different groups of people and how people either hanged out with their friends or preferred to eat alone. Everyone is different and they have the right to decide how they want to spend their time, from these two behaviors I could notice the mindset of how people treat others. The cultural rule shown here is that people treat each other with politeness but that is the limit of it, and any further actions or being in close proximity to other strangers can make individuals or groups feel uncomfortable. Maybe in some other cultures people approach each other differently but in the American culture keeping a neutral attitude towards others is the main option, this is somewhat reflected on how the United States has its relations with other countries. Only intervening in issues if it is completely

necessary.
My second observation was on how technology is currently shaping the way people act and socialize. As people get more involved and have better access to new technology it becomes something completely normal. But what people do not see is that it changes behaviors. The cultural rule represented by this behavior is an association of new things, like mentioned before as we get more and more involved with smartphones and similar devices it becomes something that everyone accepts and that people begin to depend on. These devices allow people to be able to isolate themselves from everyone else, even if they are surrounded by many people. This then leads to a society of people who now are even more reluctant to have more social contact with others because now they have a way out of having to do that. It creates a dependency and discomfort among people when they are not able to use their phones to distract themselves in an environment like this. So these rules of adapting to new things can also be hindering for human social behavior.