Final Blog Post

A video, we watched in class about the Futurama Rise at the 1964 World Fair, showed predictions from the 1960s of what society would be like in the future. Some of the predictions included space rovers, space stations, climate labs in Antarctica, sea hotels, an abundance of food from the sea, public transportation, community living, and so much more. This was all predicted in the 1960s, and we have seen such technological advances today, but some of these advances include construction taking over the jungle and making it a tourist area, so while technological advances have helped society immensely, these advances do not come without implementations. 

While this video was correct in its predictions, these predictions left out the negative implications that followed these technological advances. 

In another video, Mad World Remix of Moby Video (Are You Lost in the World Like Me), the director depicts the society we currently live in highlighting the negative implications of technology. Everyone in the video is walking around on their phone 24/7 ignoring anything and everything around them unless it pops up on their screen. As shown in the video, if you do not get in on the trend of social media or technology, you do not exist in society today. We are jailed to our phones, where we film everything, take photos of food, worship celebrities, present ourselves in a positive, filtered, and false manner, and communicate electronically rather than in person. 

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I have been able to witness the effect of technological advances in society because I was able to experience the shift between flip phones and iPhones. Personally, I believe this is what caused the majority of the problems in society today because as a kid I would play outside making ice cream in the snow or building forts inside rarely looking at a screen, but now kids who are my age today, chose a screen over their imagination any day.

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I work as a camp counselor where I work with students from ages 5 - 15. These kids would rather be on their electronics than play outside, but luckily, the younger kids are not allowed to bring technology. However, the older kids can because sometimes there are long bus rides, but as a counselor what I find is these kids will sneakily use their iPads, iPhones, and video game devices outside or to whatever location we are at. It causes more issues to try and take the device away from the child because then you are focusing on that one kid rather than the entire camp you are supposed to be looking out for. 

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For example, instead of going into the pool, kids will go in for 30 minutes and then spend the remaining time on their electronics. These kids also have many attention problems and are ultimately addicted to their devices. One boy, for example, always had his video game with him and when we would take it away he would start yelling at us so much that he was sent to the disciplinary office. 

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Kids should not be addicted to technology at such a young age because they are facing problems that the average adult cannot even handle at more than half the children's age. Kids today are cyberbullied, sex trafficked, kidnapped, taken advantage of online, and so much more. 

I would be remiss to mention that I am addicted to technology too. I mean who is not in today's society? Realizing this, I have taken some steps, so that I would not go through withdrawal if I did not have my phone. Growing up, I had a Leapster instead of a D.S. so it was more educational and I had a very old iPad and iPod so I could not access anything besides games. Then going into 6th grade, I got my first iPhone, as I had over an hour-long bus ride to and from school each day. It was not until 7th grade that I started using social media. I immediately became addicted and was always on my phone. 

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Between 6th and 7th grade, my middle school started allowing student to bring their devices to the classroom to use as a tool, but it ultimately is where I noticed the shift in technology usage for me personally. In order the address the problem, in high school, I gave up social media for a while during Lent, and also because I went to a boarding school, I was not allowed to have my phone at night. Then in college, I found I was always on my phone again, so I turned off my like count on Instagram, turned off my Instagram and Snapchat notifications, and deleted TikTok. 

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Today I am not on my phone as much besides when it comes to communicating with people as I get tons of texts every day as I serve on the executive committee for my sorority and members are always texting me. It is quite literally my job to respond to these members promptly. Looking at my screen time, I spend most of the time on the messages app and then Instagram.

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Companies have been wildly successful in their ability to get people addicted to their platforms so that they can sell our information, collect data, and show us advertisements, but this does not come without a price. 

As shown in Medical News Today, technology is causing psychological effects such as isolation,
depression, and anxiety as well as physical health issues such as eye strain, poor posture, sleep problems, and reduced physical activity. It does not help that there was over a year when society was locked inside due to COVID-19 with the only connection to other people outside of your household being through technology.

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There are even more problems that children are experiencing because of their use of technology at such a young age, and just like vaping, I am sure these implications for these children's future will be discovered soon, but scientists already know that children's technology usage leads to issues such as a lack of attention, low academic performance, lack of creativity, aggressive behaviors and much more. 

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There is little to nothing being done about these technological implications unless the parent, teacher, or individual facing the issues themselves steps in, but right now policymakers are concerned about the
privacy issues that are following technology. Overall while technology has helped society immensly, it has also created so many issues within society that are irreversible and need to be addressed.

Blog Post #11

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Reflecting on the various topics my fellow classmates discussed during the EOTO 2 Presentations, I can say that advancing technology is crazy and almost impossible to wrap your head around. We are currently living in the future and there are so many other places that we can go regarding technological advancement. 

While people in the past thought that in this day in age we would have flying cars, we have yet to create such a luxury, but have advanced in many other ways that one would have never been able to predict such as the creation of Chat GDP, Clear in airports, street monitoring cameras, social influencers, etc. While there are no flying cars, the artificial intelligence that surrounds us as a society today is extremely concerning.

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Specifically, one of my fellow classmates, Paige Jones, discussed the 5 eyes which is a "cooperative intelligence network that monitors the electronic communications of citizens and foreign governments." She told us that the 5 countries included in the 5 eyes are the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand creating the largest intelligence network in the world. This was my first time every hearing about the organization.

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I personally liked Jones's connection with the topic as she said during her presentation that this is concerning as countries have found a loophole in being able to break their own countries' privacy laws, but ultimately it is for the good of the people. I believe that this organization should have a bit more oversight because this could easily start being abused. With the concern of corruption with American intelligence agencies, I cannot imagine the corruption and concerns that might follow the 5 eyes.