When we speak of
the impact of technology on society, we always talk about the positive effects
of technology and about how technology has made life easy. We talk about the
Internet as an information resource and a communication platform and
conveniently ignore the fact that an overexposure to it leads to Internet
addiction. We often discuss how technology has made life easy but easily forget
that it has made us overly dependent on it. Have you thought of the impact of
technology from this point of view? I am sure, most of you haven't. Let us look
at this aspect of technology here.
Communication
There are a lot
of positive things to do with social communication for example you can
communicate with people at the other end of the world there is no limit to how
far you can communicate as long as there is another person who is able to reply
to your email / facebook comments. You can meet a lot more friends over the
social network and can arrange to meet new people. Communicating over the
internet is fast and easy you can send a message to someone in America inside
seconds this is handy if you are communicating with family or even friends who
maybe you have not communicated with for a while for whatever the circumstances
were. Although there is all the above there is a down side to social
communication where you can be in danger you could be talking to someone over
the internet and you could have never met them face to face in your life. When
you send an email to a friend or person from your family you do not get to see
what their reactions or facial expressions to your email. You could get
involved in cyber bullying or you could get bullied over the internet yourself.
Also being on the computer everyday can make you extremely lazy and this can be
highly addictive and in some cases cause obesity.
Texting
alone has made a huge impact on the grammar, spelling, and punctuation skills
of people of all ages, including those over 25. Teachers see it, professors see
it, and employers are seeing it now too. These technologies at our disposal are
here to make our lives easier, and teach us things we didn’t already know, or
forgot. Instead of using them to teach us, we use them to correct us, move on,
and forget. If spell check says you spelled a word wrong, make note of it,
correct it, move on, and remember!
Education
The internet is a
wonderful thing when it comes to searching for information people who would
like to learn new things can do this via the internet you don’t need to read
paragraphs and paragraphs of information you can just get the answer you need
by a click of a mouse. The internet is
very good for looking up coursework and it gives you helpful tips as well. But the internet can result in people just
breaching copyright laws by copying and pasting everything that they see this
can result in a fail in your coursework also if you have a facebook or anything
and you are on the internet doing coursework you could be distracted by this
and end up sitting on facebook all evening and getting no coursework done.
As for our current generation, my word of
advice is to not rely heavily on technology to live your lives. Your life is
yours to control. Teach yourself these skills because without them, we will
struggle to move on as a society. Don’t forget the technologies because without
them as well, we will struggle to move forward. Technology has made learning,
making friends, having fun, and interacting so much easier than ever before. It
would be a shame to use the capabilities of them and turn them into our worst
enemy.
To the parents of these generations…yes,
you have a role here too. Make your children talk to their friends face-to-face
because you don’t know to whom they are talking and they you also don’te ven
know what they have talking about.
Last but not least, the “pro’s” tend to
lean more towards making our life easier and making it take less time to get
things done. The “con’s” are primarily that we take these technologies for
granted and lose sight of reality. As a result, this society today has moved
towards social media sites as their primary form of communication among friends
instead of being more social in the real world. Society is moving away from
social interactions, like the almighty (and feared) face-to-face communications
and it’s very disheartening. Finally, I hope that we keep come up with these
brilliant ideas, but I also hope that we, the users, don’t become more
antisocial because of it!