More and more people these days work harder and longer hours and have no time for family life and friends. What are the causes in your opinion for this? How is it affecting family life and the society as a whole? Use relevant examples to support your view.

Nowadays, people are working harder than ever and have longer working hours. This kind of living has negatively affected their family and social life. There are several factors that cause the situation and the following essay will discuss them in 1detaildetails. For a number of reasons, people in general work harder these days, 2as can be seenas it can be seen from their long working hours. Firstly, it is due to the 3intense job competitiontough working competition these days. For a single job position, hundreds of people are competing and the private organisations are firing employees due to performance 4issuesissue all the time. Further, as business has become more competitive, 5many companies have set 6higher targetsa bigger target, a tighter budget and stricter deadlines. Consequently, the work volume has become higher and employees need to spend more time for completing their 7workworks. Secondly, it is believed that we are living in 8a materialistic and hedonistic worldthe materialistic and hedonic world nowadays. People are respected based on their assets, position and power and therefore a lot of people 9choosechose to focus on their career and work overtime. As people choose to spend more hours in their workplace, it has negatively affected their family and social life. One of the cases is that many parents abandon their children as they are busy working. Some of the children feel ignored by their parents and this has a serious psychological effect, while other children become addicted to video games or even drugs. In another case, it is reported that long working hours 10have affected the divorce ratehave affected to the divorce rate. Many young couples chose to focus on their careers and have less time for their spouse. 11As a result, both of them 12lack proper communication and emotional connectionlack the proper communication and relationship which are crucial for maintaining a happy and healthy relationship. Furthermore, 13family tiesthe family tie is not as strong as it used to be and this is a serious issue that our society is facing these days. 14People have a sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy diets due to their busy corporate life. They have little time for exercise or outdoor activities and this is degrading the overall health of people. In conclusion, it is true that people have become more ambitious with their careers these days, as they spend longer hours at work. On the one hand, I could understand the situation as business competition has become tighter and some people want to maintain their lifestyle. However, many people do not realise that it has some negative effects on their family and social life. Many of their children have become depressed and the divorce rate has increased rapidly in the past few years. Therefore I personally believe that we should have a balanced life between 15workworks and family.