As countries progress, there is a trend towards living alone or in smaller family units

Topic As countries progress, there is a trend towards living alone or in smaller family units. What might be the causes of this trend and its effects on society?

In the contemporary era, more and more people are switching to a lifestyle in which they live alone or with a small number of family members. There are various reasons contributing to this trend. This is deemed as a negative development in society.

In fact, many individuals decide to scale down their family units because of several factors. Firstly, life quality is significantly elevated if they live with fewer family members. Not only is living space more comfortable with little furnishings, but the surrounding environment is also not seriously affected by noise pollution when there are only two or three people living under one roof. This helps people avoid family quarrels usually seen in an extended family where each individuals have different lifestyles that conflict with each other. Secondly, people who opt for this lifestyle have a burning desire to live on their own with a view to improving themselves. They will become independent from the other people in their family in many aspects of daily life such as household chores or self-care. Their social networking is also about to be broadened as they can spend more time engaging in hangouts with multitudes instead of staying at home and talking with immediate family members.

However, pursuing a living-alone lifestyle or small family trend negatively impacts society. To begin with, people's well-being might significantly decrease due to the amount of stress they have to deal with when living alone. This is the result of taking the burden of taking care of themselves, managing familial things, and working alone. Moreover, the relationships among them with the other family members living far away from them will fade away. It is evident that the family drift is attributed to the little time spent together since people are inundated with their personal lives. In addition, there might be a lack of accommodation in the areas where small family units are located. A plethora of houses and apartments bring into the suffocation of the city landscape if each family has two or three houses for some individuals.

In conclusion, the tendency of scale-down-member families is getting popular owing to the demand for a high-quality life and self-improvement. Society will be detrimentally impacted in terms of low residents' well-being, family distance alongside with accommodation deprivation.

A clear question was asked as a part of the writing guide. You are expected to provide a short response to that question, for development in the reasoning paragraphs. Failure to address the question with a direct response will result in an incomplete writer's opinion, which will affect the clarity of the writer's opinion as scored in the Task Accuracy section. Expect to receive deductions for not giving a clear response to the writing guide inquiry.


This is a connecting phrase. It cannot be used at the start of a sentence since it does not connect one presentation idea to the next. This incorrect connecting phrase usage will result in a GRA deduction.