After watching the video and reading the articles about technology taking over our society, I’ve found it to be very alarming reading the statistics and how drastic the changes have been. One of the articles wrote that 2.87 billion people have smartphones. That article was posted in June 2018, and I can only imagine the number is still increasing. In the article, the writer discussed how in all this technology they have created these technology campaign goals; awareness, teach awareness and to encourage further research. They hope to gain public attention and with that, to graduate a new generation that strongly believes it’s critical to behave responsibly online, alongside creating a new curriculum. One article explained that there were four root causes of this technology addiction. The first one is the network effects, with more use, more improvements follow. The next one is web inputs, this idea was also talked about in the video we watched explaining the online “voodoo doll” that collects your interests and creates this online version of you as a way to suck you in and keep you online for hours. The third cause listed was the attention economy, the engagement with the internet and the emotion that is driving you. Lastly, it explained the platform dynamics, so many new platforms are being created and are uniquely powerful.
Next, the ledger of harms had a list of 6 negative impacts that come from technology. It first listed attention. I do believe that my attention span has shortened more recently. I find myself in class immediately going to look at my phone after 20 minutes of sitting at my desk. In class, we talked about how the apple watch created a way to limit our phone time, although you can argue its a great tool I think its almost concerning to think that we have to buy another piece of technology to limit our current technology use. The next issues are mental health and relationships. I believe that these two topics can be tied together because when you start to use so much technology that you start to isolate yourself which dissolves your relationships. Relationships with friends and family are such a crucial aspect of your mental health. When I was about 13 years old, iPhones and technology really started to grow. Now, it’s interesting to watch the generations of kids grow up surrounded by technology. Children are facing new obstacles socially, they lack social skills because they are using their technology constantly. Another subject listed was a democracy, the author talked about how their platforms are becoming irresponsible, some even encourage bad behavior.
I think to fit humane tech criteria, I think we need to encourage less technology use in the classroom at a younger age. It’s starting to become critical when we start to do larger assignments at older ages, but they start using computers and tablets at such a young age, can lessen social skills and create much more isolation in younger generations.
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