Final Blog Post: How Technology Really Affects Us

Ethan Parker 

10/20/21

Introduction:

Technology has made tremendous advancements overtime and technology can be both positive and negative, in many different aspects. We would not be where we are at now in life if it weren't for technology, but there has also been large amounts of setbacks in human development due to technology. Throughout this blog post I will discuss how technology has benefited us and been a good resource for us over time, how technology has ruined life and resulted in failure or setbacks in humans over time, and how this class of Media Law and Literacy has pushed me to think of how technology can influence or affect us throughout our lives. 

How Technology Has Been A Benefit To Humans:

Something technology has done for us that will always be remembered as remarkable is the advancement of communication through technology. This made things easy for us in many different ways, one would no longer have to experience the struggle of having to send an envelope to someone's house and wait for who knows how long for a short worded response. Technology has allowed us to save money as well as valuable time when it comes to communicating with other in many different forms of ways and being that technology has done that, we can now focus on other things that may be more time consuming as well as maybe more important such as our jobs or even just going on with our daily lives. The creativity technology has allowed us to embark on is immaculate and now we are able to do a variety of things when it comes to communication, things such as being able to easily sell products, have conversations with people all across the globe, and get involved with what the internet really has to offer. Things have been completely sped up overtime, no many continually use newspapers anymore, you can find access to news via multiple sources. Technology has also introduced things such as social media which is the largest source of communication we use today and it is not just the younger generation who has become hip to this entire social media communications thing, even professionals use it and believe it or not, that is what helps make up the large percentage of those who use social media to communicate. Professionals tend to use social media outlets such as LinkedIn to reach out to who they may want to come into conversation with. Social media allows us to communicate with a very large number of people and this way we can strongly stay up to date on the newest trends and what is going on throughout the world, you name it, you can find it on social media and its most recent doings. Social media has unlocked an entire new wave of communication and it does not look to be slowing down soon. Something else that is very big when it comes to communication due to technology that was slightly touched on in the first couple of sentences is digital communication. This one is very important, since there is now sources such as social media, emailing, and automatic text messaging already placed on everyones phones, digital communication is instant. We no longer have to go on the struggle of having to wait hours, days, or months for a response. With digital communication we are able to text or call our friends and family quickly and on the spot as well as share a variety of pictures and memories right away. Oftentimes a long while ago, people used to meet face to face in person when they had to discuss something and it was not easy to schedule a time to talk because you never knew when someone was really free, where they'd be, or what exactly they were doing. Now being that we have digital communication we do not have to go through this struggle, we can communicate through technology quick and easy. When looking at life scenarios, digital communication and technology is always playing a large role, for instance when looking at the pandemic, this forced many to have to work in an at home setting as well as quarantine and stay inside their homes. Digital communication has allowed us to be able to stay in contact with friends and family that we may have been cut off from seeing due to the pandemic and the forces of having to stay at home. Also digital communication has allowed some of us to continue to work through the pandemic because you can use you computer or laptop to set up some form of live digital communication that allows us to continue our everyday work and school lives through digital communication and technology. Something else that has been completely helpful when it comes to technology and revolutionizing communication is the growth of technical devices such as the phone or the laptop. These devices have come such a long way and as they progress they allow us to communicate better and much easier. Just take a look at the iPhone and how far it has come. Like my professor once said "It is a mini computer" and after he mentioned this, I came to realization that the "mini computer" is getting more intelligent and intelligent as new ones come out. With this being said, they are providing us with communication uses on them that we can access from anywhere at anytime and how great is that. Honestly, sit down for a second and ponder on the fact that the iPhone is able to communicate at a high level from many different places. This allows us to communicate important things that could be emergency or in general just something important as well as we could bring people along with us virtually by using the communication on these devices and sending high level pictures. It was such a great idea to be able to move from the wall phone to actual phones we can take with us on a daily. This also helps a tremendous amount because we no longer have to only worry about making certain calls from one spot or one location, it can now be done pretty much everywhere and on the go. The devices are also becoming more useful in the sense of size. You can purchase a computer or laptop of your preference, phones are not as big as they used to be, they can fit in the average person's hands and easily slide into the pocket for transporting the device. There has been so many breakthroughs when it comes to these devices, it is just amazing. We can do things quickly and much easier as well due to the development of these devices, things such as easily switching on an alarm on our phones before we go to sleep rather than having to go through a time consuming process of setting a regular alarm on an alarm clock. These devices may start off at decently high prices but imagine how much money they can actually save you, they can pretty much save your life at times especially if you need to make a huge phone call because you are in a very dangerous situation. You do not have to spend the money and waste the time as well as gas to do the things you can easily do with a cell phone or laptop. It is safe to say that technology has certainly helped communication to a fine degree. 

Negative Aspects of Technology:

Although technology has been extremely beneficial for many humans overtime, it has also been ruining the lives of individuals, technology does have its good side, but there is always a bad side that comes along with the extreme benefits of something, especially technology. Due to technology being easily accessible in todays society, it can lead to many different drawbacks in us humans, drawbacks such as eyestrain as well as difficulty focusing on important tasks. Technology easily causes eyestrain because you are constantly looking at a screen on some form of a device, when engaging in staring at a device with a screen, oftentimes you blink less and your eyes must work harder to focus on the screen that is practically moving as you are trying to focus on it. Most of us use our phones daily and we tend to have our phones particularly close to our faces and our eyes. This is not good at all, this also adds to the stress our eyes may receive from the screen and overtime this can lead to a worsen eyesight as well as the disability to focus on extreme tasks. Technology can also ruin our focus and our attention spans as I somewhat stated earlier. This occurs because we are practically rewiring our brains to get used to the 10 minute video we are watching daily versus an hour and a half long class period. Since we use technology so often our attention spans are being shortened from 12 minutes to about 5 minutes. A sign that you may be spending too much time on technology is if you are not quite able to remember names of individuals. People who are online for about 5 hours a day tend to struggle with this. Yes, technology does tend to bring some people together but it also does the opposite and causes isolation. There are studies that show younger individuals who use social media more often are three times more likely than this who do not use social media as often to feel isolated socially. These individuals engaging so much of their time into social media have a lower confidence level as well as less motivation to engage in social interactions.  Social media and other uses of technology can lead to various mental health issues. When it comes to social media, people can express themselves and practically say what they want via social media and oftentimes many people do say what they want, but they do it anonymously. Due to individuals having negative social interactions on social media, they may tend to have higher levels of depression as well as anxiety. Due to you not knowing exactly what could happen on social media platforms, you do not know what you may run into. You could easily have negative effects upon your mood that worsen specific symptoms of depression and anxiety. People who tend to lose control of their life spend a large chunk of time online and this can introduce anxiety as well as depression. Another negative technology has attributed to is our posture. Due to us humans constantly using devices such as mobile phones and tablets, we look down and forward most of the time which causes us to practically be hunched forward as well as looking down at a screen. This is never a good thing, by doing this we could heavily harm our neck as well as our spine both of which we need to be as healthy and strong as possible throughout our lifetimes. While using our technology, we do not like taking breaks or stretching while on social media because we are too focused in what the screen has to offer, therefore making us have some long-term effects we may feel as we get older such as neck or back pain. A huge issue that technology brings to the table is that many may encounter sleep issues or problems. As many know, when using technology closer towards sleep time it can cause issues with us falling asleep, staying asleep, or having a good night deep sleep. The lights that we encounter from our phones and other screen technology stimulate the brain. There has been a study that shows the blue light from a screen can cause disturbance with our sleep patterns as well as it can cause us to not feel as alert the next day. Technology users who use the technology an hour before bed seem to receive less satisfactory sleep than others who do not use technology before bed. Those who use technology before bed also tend to feel sleepier throughout the day and this can range in various different ways, even including driving. I stated earlier how technology may stimulate our brains and by the technology doing this, our bring pretty much tell us that we are no longer as sleepy as we were and we becomes less ready to fall asleep. That is not all technology can affect, technology can also help reduce our physical activity motivation. Technology sort of promotes a sedentary lifestyle and these types of effects can contribute to negative aspects such as obesity, premature death, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. People can spend hours at a time on technology and this is an obvious way many people today do not exercise consistently. Our phones make us want to sit still and pretty much use them all day as well as rely on them for our everyday challenges and this does not help because we become non-active and lazy. Oftentimes when you go to a gym, you will notice many people on their phones throughout different sets of their workout and this is not at all good. The phone is causing us to pretty much take a break from our workout and focus on the phone a bit which can make our workout longer, a bit easier and not as beneficial for us in the long run. We want to stay up to date on everything in today's world and instead of taking time to go workout or get involved in some form of physical activity, we find ourselves sitting on our phones scrolling through timelines daily. Last but certainly not least, technology can certainly play a huge role in affecting our children. Our children's brains are steady developing and their Brians may be more sensitive to the effects that can be drawn out from technology than other such as adults. Children who may be exposed to the overuse of technology may develop low academic performance, low creativity, lack of attention, delays in language development, poor sleep quality, aggressive behaviors, and addiction to the technology. Our children are likely to develop disorders if they continue on the path of overusing technology and that does not look bring for their futures. Since there is so much technology available, children become more distracted and easily develop the ability to not be able to focus on other things when they are presented to them. The development of children can be slowed and hindered if they continue to use technology over, and over again. 

What This Class Has Helped Me To Realize About Technology's Influence:

This class has allowed me to realize that technology can be beneficial but also a curse at the same time. Throughout this course, Professor Smith has informed us about how important our first amendment right is and what all we should be able to do with it. There has been countless times throughout class Professor Smith has showed us how the government has taken away or limited out first amendment right is some form and oftentimes, this occurs on technology. Technology and social medial allow us to certainly show off every aspect of our lives and the government certainly feeds on that information and majority of times, they use it against us in some way, hence why technology is evil and can be so misleading. Technology is an easy way to get information out and spread news in massive waves but be careful for what you wish for because you can quickly become locked up and moved across the country with the type of world that we live in today and it is absolutely outrageous because you'd think you are expressing yourself under the first amendment, in which you are, but the government uses the evil technology against you and overrides the system and ultimately does what they wish. 

This class has also helped me to realize that being on technology too much can ruin many different things, things in which I have discussed early but this class brought my attention to it when the topic of technology arises. The first day of class Professor Smith strongly emphasized how he felt about about having our phones in sight and when he told us to put them out of sight, it was not because he was being a mean professor, but he brought up studies, multiple factual studies that I have actually found when doing research for my final blog post! Professor Smith told us about how having our phones near us during class time, it lowers our chances of a good grade on an exam, it makes it harder for us to focus in class, as well as we are constantly distracted with them being near. 

Another thing this class has helped notice is what technology can do to us humans and our confidence levels throughout life. During this class, we often performed presentations that'd help inform our peers on important topics. Many people are already antisocial and do not have great communication skills so they tend to live their lives on technology and show themselves off throughout social media. Social media can destroy us as humans due to everything the can bring into our lives. Many receive hate through social media and I am sure everyone is familiar with the term known as 'cyberbullying' which can occur at any given time on social media. Many people tend to rely on social media for simple things such as communicating with people as well as getting their personal image out there and this is never good because social media can quickly destroy us as we put too much time into it as well as too much information, we pretty much give our personal lives away on social media daily and this class has helped me to realize that even more and with a much clearer view. 

Conclusion:

This class has not only helped me to learn about our governmental system and how important and critical our first amendment right is but this class has also allowed me to notice what all technology can bring into the lives of everyone, how we can be impacted, and not just impacted in a positive way. Technology can be very beneficial like I stated earlier, but you must never put all your trust into it as you can be stripped of your identity, personal information, as well as your confidence and well-being could be clipped in an instant. So what does this mean about technology? It means be careful and know what you are getting yourself into at all times because technology can be a slippery slope with many ups and downs we must be aware of.