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Effects of technology on society
Effects of technology on society
effect of mass media on individuals
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Anything that yields great benefits also extracts great costs. Society’s use of communication technology has made life easier, faster, and cheaper. However, our use of communication technology has also interfered with our ability to delay instant gratification in addition to altering intellectual expectations. Communication technology has unforeseen consequences to society as it rapidly progresses.
Society’s use of communication technology has made it difficult to distinguish childhood from adulthood. No longer is there a clear boundary between childhood and adulthood. TV is one type of communication technology that has attributed to this confusion. The intended audience in today’s TV is everyone. Consequently, TV shows contain the things we want to hide from our children. We want to hide violence, bad language, sex, drugs, and death. Yet, even TV shows meant for kids are full of violence, bad language, drugs, and death. Children imitate what they see on TV. There used to be a time where it was rare to see children putting up a big mouth towards their parents. Now, it is very common to see children not listen to their parents and even their grandparents. TV is affecting the behavior of children. Childhood is becoming more difficult to define because of the behavior children imitate from TV. TV is mostly visual and engages us in pattern recognition that is not differential. A linear thought process is missing in TV that is present when reading books. TV is full of constant distractions such as advertisements. The viewer’s thoughts are constantly being pulled in different directions all the time. Furthermore, there is no analytical coding present in TV. Reading is very specific in that it usually meant for a specific age group. Re...
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...ourages deep thinking. Deep thinking involves analytical decoding and making connections. This is absent in most Google searches. Communication technology is altering intellectual expectations and interfere with our ability to delay instant gratification.
Society’s use of communication technology has enriched our lives in many ways, but simultaneously has altered intellectual expectations as well as interfering with our ability to delay instant gratification. Society can no longer distinguish childhood from adulthood. TV has decreased our ability to delay instant gratification. Google hinders society’s ability to think on its own, which as a result has changed our intellectual expectations. Society’s use of communication technology negatively affects society as it interferes with our ability to delay instant gratification and has changed intellectual expectations.
Nicholas Carr, a periodic writer on issues such as technology and culture, wrote the article called “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (743) In this, he discusses the way that not only Google, but also the advancement in technology, especially computers and computer engines is slowly altering our brain, along with the way we take in information. The process started back in the 1970’s and 1980’s when technology got a jump in society. For example “television was our medium of choice” says Carr (747). From then on it has been a slow decline for the way we process information. Throughout this essay Carr backs up the reasons why he feels the way by using different types of figurative language, deductive reasoning, plus the use of logical fallacies that can strengthen or may even weaken his argument.
Advancements in technology have strived to make life easier for so many people. In most cases, the advancements have achieved its goal, but in the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr questions if the improvements in society have unintentionally hindered our thought process overall. Carr begins the article by providing personal instances when his concentration seemed to diminish due to the internet. He explains how he now loses interest when reading lengthy portions, his mind just can’t seem to remain connected to his readings. He then proceeds to talk about how today’s life is surrounded by the internet, and explains the pros and cons of it. The negative side of it is that his mind now wonders off when seeking information from
The first rhetorical strategy Springen uses in her argument is citing statistical data about the number of hours children spend watching television, the effects of watching that amount of television, and what the most highly rated television shows are among children. She cites in her essay that “American children 2 through 11 watch three hours and 16 minutes of television every day.” This data shows the reader the staggering amount of time children spend watching television each day. Springen further cites data concluding that when children watch over 10 hours of TV every week “they are more likely to be overweight, aggressive and slow to learn in school.” This data exemplifies to the reader the negative effects television has on young impressionable minds and bodies. Finally, Springen cites that among the top 5 television shows “for children 2 through 11…Survivor Thailand” ranks among them. This data shows that children exposed to television are also being exposed to programming that is far too mature for their age. By citing “bad” data about the way television negatively affects children, Springen persuades the reader in her argument to agree with her position that there is no good reason for her children to watch television on a daily basis.
I’m scrolling through the articles on Snapchat and find my way across one with an intriguing title, I instantly tap on it. I begin to scroll further down only to find myself going through extensive paragraphs of information and suddenly this article that seemed so interesting became a bore. In Nicholas G. Carr’s novel, The Shallows, he argues the internet is creating more problems to us humans than actual benefits. Our social skills are starting to lack and our interaction with technology is beginning to heighten. Humans contemplative skills are slowly fading away due to our reliance on the internet to solve our problems. Technology is inevitable by humans, seeing that individuals use it in their everyday lives. Unfortunately, this is a problem considering the use of high-tech gadgets decrease in one’s capacity for concentration, contemplation, and personal memory.
It is a well-known fact that the Internet has become a central part of society, and it has completely changed every aspect of life for the human race, whether it is for better or worse. Nicholas Carr explains his thoughts on how the Internet has changed how people think in his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” He believes that the human race is losing its ability to think deeply and is creating a distraction culture, and that companies like Google are working to increase this way of thinking. However, the issue of how the human brain is changing with the Internet is very complex, and the answer to this question goes beyond a simple yes or no.
In The Shallows, Nicholas Carr challenges the pervasive effect of Internet, citing psychology and neuroscience to prove the consequences done to our neural pathways. Technology influences the way we think, making us efficient but superficial processors who are easily distracted. There is little doubt that the Internet is reshaping our brain, but every intellectual technology does the same thing. Due the distractive and pervasive nature of the Internet, it weakens personal memory and reduces attention-spans , and interfere with students’ scholastic accomplishments.
In “Television Harms Children”, Ann Vorisek White claims that the intellectual and cognitive development of children who frequently watch television is threatened. To support this claim, she points to the findings that “the more television children watch, the weaker their language skills and imaginations” (White, 2006). Before the brain fully matures around age 12, it is in the stage of rapid development. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) “recommends that children under the age of two not watch TV or videos, and that older children watch only one to two hours per day of nonviolent, educational TV” (White, 2006). A study from the AAP (as cited in White, 2006) found that the average American child watches four hours of television every day. Considering "expression and reasoning are not automatic" abilities, young children who routinely watch television eventually become "passive and nonverbal" to stimuli in their environment (White, 2006). Since the normality of curiosity and imaginations of young children are the foundation of how they learn, remaining passive for extended periods of time affects their intellectual and moral development.
However, Carr and Turkle both agree that technology has done good, but it has come at the cost of our ability to think critically. In the two articles, both authors heavily emphasize the negative effects of computer technology on how it is diminishing human cognition and the ability to process information.
We live in a time where technology is at the center of our society. We use technology on a daily basis, for the simplest tasks, or to aid us in our jobs, and don’t give a second thought to whether these tools are actually helping us. Writers such as Kevin Kelly and Clive Thompson argue that the use of technology actually helps us humans; whiles writers such as Nicholas Carr argue that technology affects people’s abilities to learn information negatively.
Steve Ballmer once declared that “the number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.” He assuredly expresses how technology has not only benefited, but has also transformed society to be more creative, diligent, and aware of their potential. On the contrary, technology may have been beneficial to attaining knowledge, but it also ruined our humanity. While the average user, such as Steve Ballmer, may find technology to be useful and important in their daily lives, technology comes to be an impairment in society. It interrupts
Children in their adolescents years watch a great amount of TV each week and it is almost inevitable that they will start to be influenced by what they see on their television. They will see diffe...
Young people especially the teenagers are sensitive and receptive to learning new things. The media provides more than they can handle. Access to different programs, shows, and movies affect the manner that the teenagers behave. Today, it is unfortunate to say that the media is becoming more sexual and violent than the older days, resulting in similar behaviors among the teens (Craig, & Baucum, 2001). By watching programs intended for the adults, teenagers are drifting even further. They start behaving like adults without the prerequisites of becoming one. This means that they have contents that do not match with their ages. And then terrible things begin – increased college dropouts, teenage pregnancies, and increased cases of suicides. Some teenagers who had bright future ahead of them will
Technology has progressively become an enormous part of our everyday lives. Between the Internet, television, and countless handheld devices available, technology has effectively altered our sense of people, time, and space. Society has increasingly become more and more dependent on technological advances and creations. Numerous aspects of our daily lives, such as communication, business, and education are constantly changing due to the rapid advancements in technology. This rapid change could potentially be harmful to adolescents and society as a whole. As a result of the increased use of technology throughout the years, society has become lazy, dependent, and unable to effectively think without the aid of a technological device. In many ways, modern technology has had the effect of making us work harder, just to stay in the same place.
From my perspective, Nicholas Carr’s argument that the internet appears to be decreasing his capacity for concentration and contemplation does apply to my generation’s internet natives. Generation Z, my generation, has an innumerable amount of internet natives who are perfect examples of Carr’s argument against the internet. My generation, who will be the leaders of the world, are losing their mental capacity because of the frequent use of electronics but especially the World Wide Web. Approximately twenty percent of children from ages eight to sixteen have a computer in their bedroom, and fifty four percent have internet access. Unfortunately, Carr’s argument applies to my generation’s web natives because they are engrossed in the web for twenty-four hours and seven days a week which leads to a plethora of them being sidetracked while doing their activities, unable to focus and reflect on many ideas, and their way of thinking is being modified.
“We barely have time to pause and reflect these days on how far communicating through technology has progressed. Without even taking a deep breath, we’ve transitioned from email to chat to blogs to social networks and more recently to twitter” (Alan 2007). Communicating with technology has changed in many different ways. We usually “get in touch” with people through technology rather than speaking with them face to face. The most popular way people discuss things, with another individual, is through our phones. Phones have been around way before I was born in 1996, but throughout the years, they have developed a phone called a “smart phone”. The smart phone has all kinds of new things that we can use to socialize with our peers. On these new phones, we can connect with our friends or family on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Technology has also developed Skype, a place you can talk with people on the computer with instant voice and video for hours. The new communication changes have changed drastically from the new advances made in technology through our smart phones, social networking sites, and Skype.