Negative Effects of Technology Essay Example

only prevalent amongst all people but also the preferred mode of communication that has attracted the largest percentage of youth and even the adults who always want to appreciate modernity. The social media networks dominate all forms of interaction therefore limiting any possibility of physical interaction. On the negative side, the face-to-face interaction approach often takes longer to develop than all forms of physical interaction.

Physical interaction allows people to effectively assess other parties’ feelings, the kind of moods they may be experiencing and whatever thoughts they may be undergoing (Duncan & Fiske, 2015). To the contrary, technology impedes all these forms of assessment due to abstractions associated with it. People lose a sense of belonging and can therefore, not share somebody’s’ suffering, thoughts and feelings as it would have otherwise been for the physical interaction. Taking from the children’s perspective, there is always need for children to interact with one another in order to gain social competence. To the contrary, most technologically enlightened tend to form unconstructive friendships with computing machines rather than forming friendships with their peers. This by far may hinder the children from nurturing their interpersonal skills than intended.

The state of communicating with a potential listener is such that there is no one willing to listen, as the people are always too busy to pick up a conversation. No one is above the hook and that everyone is immersed in texting to an extend they are too tired. It so happens that not even a long lasting relationship can come out of it. Even as text message remains prevalent, it is dangerous since people cannot make effective communication through text messaging. Although

it is faster than making a phone call, but as people sacrifice their time for convenience, it affects their time and ruins the flow of conversational talk. As words become limited in the sense of communication through texts, a point of worry ensues since it affects the sense of collective conscience. The lack of intimacy togetherness turns people colder that they become detached than ever presumed. It could be true that people can connect through platforms such as Facebook, skype and twitter but personal connection diminishes with time. Through use of social networking platforms, many relationships have broken and hatred has spread everywhere. This explains how the technology, through advancements of social media can lead to breed discord among people and erode peaceful gains in the society. Due to the easy walkways initiated by the advancing technology, people lack the capabilities of how to handle and tend to their issues

Psychological Effects

There is always a heightened concern on how time spent on the internet increases depressive symptoms and loneliness. Time spend over the internet especially during the initial encounter is greatly associated to a significant decline to social involvement and isolation. These conditions are always measured in terms of inter-family communication, the social networking size, and feelings of loneliness. These effects could come due to various reasons such as the time spent over the internet tends to substitute the time that would have been spent on other social activities, or the online relations tend to provide limited support than the one an individual would have acquired through the natural life. When an individual sits staring at computing machines, he/ she may undergo an altered sense of

consciousness. While some experience their mindsets blending with that of the opposite persona, some may still feel a sense of conscience resembling dreams. The altered sense of consciousness may well explain why the internet may look attractive to some people as well as some forms of addiction within the cyberspace. Over dependence on the internet tends to reduce the capability of individuals to think critically, which is an essential aspect in true creativity (Carr, 2010). Again, the overstimulation of the brain through computer hyperlinks requires the brain to give maximum attention to smaller short-term decisions that may never be beneficial in the end. The extreme availability of a vast array of information may overwhelm the brain and hurt the long-term memory making it difficult for individuals to recall some events.
Still again, internet use through the social networking sites may be the cause of people’s downfall. The sites motivate people to mirror their images alongside others and thus confuse their own identities. The need for somebody to be constantly available responding to the massive social media accounts available may lead to depression, reduction of sleep and anxieties among internet users. More specifically, the use of social media in the midnight when combined with other sources of emotional stress could lead to incidences of poor sleep quality and lowering of the self-esteem. The previous studies tended to focus on whether too much screen time can cause afflictions of the back, the headache and eyestrain. Currently, investigations conclude the exposures also affect mental health.

Cultivates Criminal Behavior

Despite the fact that computers may have resourceful materials such as computer games that are essential in encouraging positive, accepted social behavior, the

most popular videos and games often entail acts of violence and aggression. The problem keeps escalating since as the new generation of games keeps advancing so are the violent and aggressive games and videos. Various studies reveal that watching aggressive or violent computer programs tend to increase an individual’s hostility and criminal behavior (Gentile & Anderson, 2003). The effects are even worst when it comes to children involvement, since they have the ability to learn and imitate quickly as compared to the adults. Indeed, there is a greater connection between playing violent computer games and watching violent computer video videos with increased rates of criminal behavior. The most associated variable is the preference to play computer games when compared to the time spend while playing. The violent images and criminal activities endorsed through technological advancements have effects on arousing the emotions and thoughts that would culminate into aggressive and violent behaviors on internet users. For instance, technology propagates images of characters maiming, murdering and creating all forms of disturbance. When the children see such images, they directly connect to such images and thus adopt such criminal behavior even when they are still young. The social media acts as the most notable platform where violence and aggression can be perpetuated.

The Nowadays criminals use technology as tools to commit crime. Criminal gangs have perfected their game such that they rely on technology to incite their sympathizers, promote violence and recruit new members. They have taken the advantage of the existing and new technologies after learning them through learning institutions and passing the knowledge further to their fellow criminals. In most cases, they start by experimenting with existing

technological techniques and develop mechanisms that would conceal any trace of criminal evidence. By so doing, they trump over the security technologies that existing criminal agencies may be using to capture them (McQuade, 2006).

Promotes Poor Communication Skills

Slowly by slowly the quickly advancing technology has turned into an integral part of human communication and therefore has taken over all facets of face-to-face interaction. During this rapid expansion of technology, the general fear is that people may get immersed into the virtual world that thy may overlook all the benefits of the real world. People have become more concerned with communicating with virtual friends, family members and other individuals using the available technology without putting into consideration the presence of others. Due to the advanced mobile phones in this technological era, people find it comfortable communicating with their loved ones using mobile phones than engaging in personal communication. This greatly indicates how technology ruins physical interaction both in terms of quality and in terms of quantity. Even as text message remains prevalent, it is dangerous since people cannot make effective communication through text messaging. Although it is faster than making a phone call, but as people sacrifice their time for convenience, it affects their time and ruins the flow of conversational talk. As words become limited in the sense of communication through texts, a point of worry ensues since it affects the sense of collective conscience.

One of the greatest impacts is that the presence of mobile phones during interactions may impede a person’s empathetic concern. This situation is even more pronounced when mobile operators have a closer relationship than those who are further apart. Mobile phones have

a very fundamental meaning in whichever society that is technologically advanced. Regardless of whether they are active or in their inactive modes, mobile phones serve as a symbol of a wider social network between people. When they are present, people would find the urge to seek more information, carry out more virtual communication and thus direct their thought elsewhere other than the core objective. This, therefore, implies that the pervasive nature of our computing society brings forth an array of behavioral demand that significantly affects the context of face-to-face communication. In the end, the changes in communication patterns are likely to bring forth a situation whereby employees in the workforce are unable to communicate with their employees and therefore fail to succeed in the workforce. In addition, the future generation of parents may find it hard even to give audience to their children to communicate, and the general life may turn out highly isolated and less fulfilling.

Affects People’s Perception to Reality

Technology affects people’s perception to reality such that computers tend to create simulated worlds and thus continuous interaction with computers may cause individuals to change their experience from the real life situation to the virtual world. While working with various computer programs such as games and other software that mimic real life experiences, people get used to simulated characters and other non-living objects and adapt to their culture. This has an effect on our lives since people who are used to simulated culture may find it hard to demarcate the boundaries between reality and artificial life (Subrahmanyam et al, 2000). Technological advances have brought in new inventions such as the automated role-playing games, which are

played over the internet. In such circumstances, virtual characters are designed to interact with other characters that are operated by actual people. While playing such games, people tend to imagine they are playing with real human beings. These forms of virtual realities featuring slightly idealized characters makes the users adapt to such life forms hence exhibiting the tendencies of communicating through multiple identities. At first, when individuals start experiencing multiple identities it appears as if it is a developmental undergrowth but it soon develops into adulthood. Unlike what happens in most theaters, one may never understand if they are interacting with a real character or an identity of somebody else. A few studies indicate that the effects of virtual reality can be very severe especially when they involve interacting with violent video games. The effects are such that one could develop violent and aggressive behaviors without any due consideration to reality. Children are always the greatest victims in this case since they may fail to differentiate between reality and fantasy. As they grow up, they mature while carrying on such kind virtually preconceived minds.

Social Media Affects Productivity

The youth, students and employees take much of their time interacting through the social media. However, one question that remains unanswered is if actually the social media benefits people in terms of productivity. It could be true that use of the social media can promote productivity but its benefits depend on the circumstances of application. Most critics of the social media content that use of the social media in the workplace lowers productivity (Aguenza et al, 2012). As the users embrace the social networking sites they tend to waste

a lot of time, lessen their social bonds and erode interpersonal communication within the workplace. For this reason, most of the institutions concerned with the weighty matter of these effects often ban the use of the social media and other similar sites within their premises. Another prevalent argument concerning the social media is actually what ought to be explored while visiting such sites.

Technology has separated social interaction from work interaction making the two concepts not only dissimilar conflicting. The impact of technology through social media would and contuse to be a profound topic in the current life. The modern society is experiencing a paradigm shift such that rather than embracing the old framework of change, which is always from inside out, a new model now exists from outside in. The mixes in market keep changing as per the changes. The mixes are a true representative of the changing rates of interest. Some of the activities that would waste productivity of the company may include aspects such as interrupts involving use of social networking tools such as emails, text messaging or idle surfing. Some of the activities may entail switching multiple windows driving various standalone applications and tools and internet searches. With the modern platforms that support voice calls and video interaction, phone calls and ad hoc greetings through the social media take much of the productive time. In the end, these activities ruin the reputation of the company and distract its productivity.

Infringing on People’s Rights

The current information era is characterized by the increased number of knowledge workers therefore making the society more open in the sense of a global village and internationalization. This kind of

paradigm shift comes with other issues such as ethical and jurisdictional considerations. Most specifically, factors such as access to information, the free flow of data and information, protection of intellectual property and the right to privacy must be considered. Privacy refers to an individual’s decision to remain excluded from the public. The constitution in whichever country protects individuals’ rights to privacy. Privacy is a right such that it necessitates other rights such as individual autonomy and liberty (Britz, 2010). This implies that privacy, dignity and freedom are three related concepts. Technology had made it easier to expose information considered private and confidential.

On the other hand, technology may be used to exclude people from acquiring necessary information using a variety of security mechanisms such as passwords and locks. The manner in which technology affects people’s privacy manifests in various ways. From the onset, electronic surveillance of people in the workplace threatens their privacy, as they are not free to engage in their private endeavors. The interception of messages as they are relayed from one source to destination affects people’s privacy in that the messages may contain confidential data deemed necessary to protect the sender and the receiver. In the process of data banking, various databases containing confidential information are clustered together in a manner that compromises privacy. In this case, the problem is not on the integration of information and instead, the fact that the owner of that information does not authorize integration, then it would imply infringing on personal privacy.

More on Information Privacy

The capacity of storage through technological means has advanced in terms of bandwidth. Such developments have brought drastic changes on how the society

stores and retrieves information. Even considering the field of academic research, one would definitely find it difficult writing, compiling and submitting research publications without the support of technological storage. Most of these activities depend on the internet whose privacy generally revolves around cookies. In as much as the cookies may be beneficial in site personalization, intruders might use them to track a user using multiple websites and webpages. The advent of cloud computing has even accelerated the threat such that as opposed to when data was locally stored, data is now stored over the internet, which exposes it to potential threats and attacks. The social media still comes into focus at this level again since the media platforms create an avenue where internet users can easily broadcast their private information that could necessitate identity theft.

In addition, while users interact with the internet, they generate many data. This data could be user-generated or based on various statistics of the user behavior. Using business intelligence, data mining could be done to extract information from different user behavioral patterns. In as much as this could be beneficial in optimizing user experience, the information may be manipulated to affect the user completely based on different contexts. For instance, Big Data may be wrongly used to profile the user, create patterns of different user combinations and also make some sensitive derivations. Mobile devices are not an exception since they work as networked devices that collect and disseminate information that may inhibit the user privacy. Current technology permits usage of data-generating sensors that include the GPS digital cameras that can transmit data over the internet to allow stalking and physical attacks.

As technology continues to affect the privacy and confidentiality of data, it leads to individual and social-economic implications. At a personal level, compromise to confidentially leads to loss of sovereignty and dignity of a person. It is also a threat to the freedom and privacy. From the socio-economic perspective, technology threatens the survival of larger multinational business enterprises that host larger databases of people’s information.

Technology Affects the Environment

Technology has ruined our lives through the effects it has on environment. It compromises human health, endangers the natural ecosystems and imbeds human safety. The risks associated with environmental damage due to technology include some harmful chemicals in air, water contamination and contamination of food sources. There is also the risk of losing the natural habitat or the disruption of the life forms and extinction of species brought forth due to exposure to technological byproducts. Technology uses non-renewable resources such as minerals and chemicals. Technology used in mining industries brings froth acid rains and problems in drainage that result into chemical reactions.

During these chemical reactions, there is always contamination of the surface water as well as the natural streams of that produce drinking water. Considering different aspects of warfare, current technological warfare equipment pose detrimental effects to the atmosphere as the weapons are manufactured using chemicals that may cause wanton destruction to the environment. During the manufacturing of nuclear weapons, Mercury wastes are released into the environment TNT materials are environmental hazards since they have the ability to persistently seep underground without dissolving. The most deadly warfare weapons are biological weapons, which are used in even if there is not active war taking place. Through such weapons, infectious

microorganisms enter the atmosphere to cause suffering and finally death through diseases in infection affecting all living organisms including human beings and plants.

As industrialization continues to take shape, technology is considered a driving a force. In a much as these advancements may be beneficial in contributing to economic growth, technology is a major contributor to the depletion of natural resources. As the industrial activities increase, natural resources are required for the purposes of manufacturing and processing. Overexploitations of natural resources such as fossil fuels cease to become beneficial to the growth of economy and instead become a threat to the environment. Technological advancements in the modern society disrupt the ecology and lead to imbalances in systems. Improved technology makes it necessary for people to device their own ways meeting basic needs and their requirement for productivity. Another environmental impact is the disposal of electronic waste otherwise called the e-waste. The e-waste are all the electrical or electronic equipment discarded or one destined for resale, reuse or recycling. Lack of proper mechanism to dispose of e-waste in the developing and developed countries can affect human health and lead to the pollution of environment. The scrap components such as the CPU contain harmful chemicals like lead, beryllium, flame-retardants. The computer monitors have a relatively higher concentration of phosphorus and lead, the components that used for the sake of display. These are environmental hazards that when left to accumulate, unprotected and discarded, may lead to damage of the whole ecosystem.

Technology and Human Health

Nowadays it is obvious that we spent much of our time glued on computer and television screens not knowing the long-term health repercussions of such kind

of endeavors. The constant scrolling all over the phones are likely causes of back pains. Sitting on the computers all the day long without imitating any form of physical activity could ruin the spinal cord and therefore impair the sitting posture. Phones are act as partner assets as people move from one location to another. As people interact without certain environments and handle the phones, they are most likely to be infected with common commutable diseases propagated through bacteria. Exposure to wireless radio waves in form of wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) could be detrimental to the reproductively of men. Repetitive motor activities such as continuously grasping the cell phones causes muscle tension and irritation conditions that bring forth wrist pains. Too much exposure to computer screens and mobile phones cause strain to the eyes. The problem may take time but the most affected is usually the ageing population. Debate continues to rage on whether or not technology leads to the cancer infections. Although conflicting results exist, mobile phones have been closely associated with cancer. It is always recommended the people who are concerned with their health to limit the length of phone calls as exposure to electromagnetic and radio waves could likely be the causes of cancer. As earlier mentioned, internet use through the social networking sites may be the cause of people’s downfall. The sites motivate people to mirror their images alongside others and thus confuse their own identities. The need for somebody to be constantly available responding to the massive social media accounts available may lead to depression, reduction of sleep and anxieties among internet users.

Erodes Cultural Norms

Culture entails the acquisition of skills, different

behavioral patterns and lifestyles. In simpler terms, it is the way of life of people. Values, beliefs and general codes of conduct are some of the common factors that define the culture of a given society. People study and learn culture through interacting with people, media or texts (Parish et al, 2012). When people are exposed to media messages, they process and react to the acquired information differently due to many variables underlying personalities. Technology has brought radical changes in terms of cultural identity and heritage. These changes have happed suddenly at very minute intervals that they have proved deadly and destructive to human values. Much of the media content being propagated by technology is full of fantasy but lack anything valuable. In so doing, technology erodes the ethically accepted human character. It separates humanity from the natural course that diminishes their natural worth. When people lose their natural sense, they tend to behave very stupid, with no sense of humanity. Instead of embracing reception, they become consumers. As the technology takes, center stage individuals would always want to behave like machines and become artificial.

One major tragedy with technology is that as it rises, it does not mind the status of the contemporary society. Through technology, youth and several adults have acquired explicitly erotic materials over the internet hence going against the traditional norms of the society. Such materials cause other secondary effects such as sexual abuse, violence, rape and premature pregnancies. Still again, the movies and images relayed through the digital media promote immorality, violence and profane (Hargrave & Livingstone, 2009). Some of the digital content tends to glorify occultism while featuring aspects of

drug abuse, immoral language and gang wars. Individuals from the less recognized cultural communities tend to imitate the dominant culture propagated through television, a situation that erodes cultural values and appreciation. The youth are the most affected and by far tend to mirror the lifestyles of the celebrities revered through the digital media.

Conclusion

In conclusion, despite the positive effects associated with technology, it has by much wider extend ruined our lives both socially and psychologically. Psychologically, technology is the cause of increased isolation and depressive symptoms among internet users. In explaining the reasons for such effects, two explanations abound. Firstly, people spend much of their time working or generally using the internet and therefore, overlook the otherwise necessary physical social activities. Secondly, Individuals could be lacking the necessary social support they would otherwise have obtained had they interacted physically. Socially, technology ruins social skills, cultivates criminal behavior, promotes poor communication, affects people’s perception towards reality, it affects productivity, infringes on people’s rights and erodes cultural norms. Technology ruins social skills since it impedes people to learn how to assess feelings, the state of mind and thoughts of other parties. It promotes criminal behavior in the sense that it teaches people violent and aggressive behavior that could lead criminal feelings.

In addition, criminal gangs rely on the capabilities on technology to invoke their rival gangs, to recruit new members and to disrupt criminal evidence. Technology promotes poor communication in the sense that when people rely on virtual communication; they tend to forget the value of physical interaction. This brings forth individuals who cannot make physical communication rather than text messaging or phone calling. Technology, through the social media

infringes on the maximum productivity of a company or even domestic activities. This is because internet users spent much of their time attending to unnecessary notifications being presented through the social networking platforms hence ruining productivity. Due to the prevalent adoption of virtual reality, technology affects users’ perception towards reality such that they cannot differentiate between fantasy and real life situations. Finally, technology erodes social norms since people tend to embrace the technologically dominant culture hence eroding the local culture.

References

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