Negative Effects of Society's Dependence on Technology

Introduction

Communication is the exchanging or transferring of a message between a sender and a receiver. Communication devices nowadays is commonly used throughout the modern world to send and to receive information. Communication devise are used in personal life, business, and even society as a whole. The devices might vary, but the object is still the same, to send and receive information. There are many types of communication device such as computer. The computers such as home computer and laptop computers became a vital communication device in modern life. Computers has given the user the ability to communicate using word, video, and audio. A computer enables the user to access the internet such as social networks, emails, and more. Computers are also used in various field in factories. And also computers are used in automotive vehicles. An automotive vehicle can have multiple computers that communicate between each to maintain proper functionality. A laptop computer is a mobile computer. They have the same functionality as desktop computers such as accessing internet, email and video conferencing. Secondly there are smartphones. A smartphone is a small computer that also functions like a telephone. Smartphones typically include digital voice service, internet access, email and text messaging. Unlike a telephone, a smartphone can do a lot more such as photo snapping, audio recording and more. Smartphones also run a wide range of computer applications for business and entertainment. And there are also Tablet PC such as ipad.

A tablet PC refers to a tablet computer, a kind of mobile computer, they usually have touchscreen or pen-enabled interface like some of the smartphones. It is also a tablet personal computer, a type of tablet which runs an adapted version of a desktop operating system. They normally have the functionality as a computer.

Dangers of a society which depends on computer screens rather than face-to-face contact for communication

Physical Health Issues

Using a computer can cause back, neck and shoulder pain, eyestrain, and overuse injuries of hands and wrists. Spending too much time on computer can contribute to obesity and other health problems. But you can reduce these risks with proper workstation design, better posture and good habits, such as taking rest breaks and restricting time spent playing computer games. The more time a person spends on a computer, the less likely the person is to participate in physical activities, which can result in weight gain. A person also is likely to experience eye and back strain and possibly repetitive injuries from computer use. Beyond these issues, computers can create turmoil for users by reacting slowly or suffering from viruses and other problems, requiring repair. The more dependent users are on their computers, the more likely these setbacks will affect their stress level and overall health. Besides, facing too much computers will lead exposure to radiation.

Anonymity

One of the main issues with computer-mediated communication comes from a lack of accountability with users. People are able to represent themselves as whatever they want on Internet forums or social networks, and this creates communication problems in both directions. A user may distort who he is by not providing accurate details about himself, and this lack of honesty affects how that person is viewed. The cloak of anonymity allows a user to potentially infringe upon socially accepted practices like tolerance or politeness.

Violation of Privacy

Communicating via computers can help people bridge large geographical gaps and access remote information, but doing so may open up a person’s privacy more than he might want. With an in-person meeting or phone conversation, there is a relative assurance that details of those exchanges will remain private. However, with email, text messaging or message boards, there is a record of what people say. Information is not just thrown out into the air like speech, but it stored as a permanent record. There is an inherent danger when third parties can access these online “conversations.” Similarly, social networks and other Internet-based communication tools are vulnerable to privacy breach, as users often engage in these activities on public networks, leaving personal information, potentially, out in the open.

Misinterpretation

The fact that most communication taking place on computers comes in the form of text can actually be a negative in terms of our ability to understand things clearly. Even with email, it is possible for information to be misconstrued or the emotion of a statement to be missed. Saying “thanks a lot” to someone in an e-mail message, for instance, could be used to genuinely relay gratitude. On the other hand, it could indicate a negative feeling of someone being put in a tough position. The context clues that a person provides with their body language and tone of voice are lost in this scenario. Users get around some of this confusion by using emoticons — keyboard characters that serve as a shorthand for mood and feeling — but a great deal of subtlety can be missed without seeing how someone reacts with their body language and voice. One of the dangers with multimedia tools is that people using those tools are unable to gain instant feedback like face-to-face conversation offers. Even on video conferencing and video calls, one participant or the other can easily step outside the range of the camera and make faces, look at other stimuli such as emails or websites, or even make comments that can’t be heard by the other correspondent. This behavior may lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Additionally, text-only communication such as email and texting has a lack of immediate feedback. The participants are unable to read body language, tone of voice or facial expression. This lack of feedback often leads to misinterpretation and offense. One particularly difficult kind of multimedia communication is sarcasm or cynicism. That humour is often taken literally in multimedia communication situations, leading to hurt feelings.

Cannot spell, use proper punctuation, or proper grammar

Many people in generation Y have poor literacy skills. They may be able to read and write weel enough to communicate, but they cannot spell, use proper punctuation, or proper grammar. People will (and are beginning to) miss out on face-to-face contact and thus their social skills will decline. It is possible that after decades of having no, or extremely limited human contact, that we will loose the ability to read body language. This could cause all sorts of misunderstandings and problems. Having limited human contact will cause us to have even less trust in others, and in turn, we will be even less friendly and even more stand-offish. It would lead to an array of health issue such as vitamin deficiencies and depression from lack of sunlight and obesity from a lack of movement.

Loosing social skills

They lack social skills and also their humane side gradually dies out cause the anonymity also makes them brave enough to be nasty to others and that catches on like wild fire just see how people answer in the religion and spirituality section it’s like a training school for nastiness

Dependency

Society’s dependency on computers for communication is also a dangerous game, as outside forces can prevent communication in a variety of ways. Earthquakes, floods and hurricanes have caused various slowdowns and stoppages of Internet connectivity for people all over the world. Additionally, reliance on social networks and email can have the unintended consequence of opening a person up to identify theft attempts and email scams. Even the outside force of political unrest can threaten a user’s ability to communicate, as the 2011 demonstrations in Cairo and Libya resulted in government shutdowns of the Internet, drastically curtailing each country’s ability to communicate, both nationally and internationally

Stalking

Another danger of multimedia tools is the ease with which a person can stalk another. Numerous computer programs use GPS technology to track individuals. Addresses and phone numbers can be found by anyone with a computer and basic search abilities and, with map programs, public records access and other information online, it’s relatively easy for a determined individual to stalk anyone they choose. This is particularly true of public figures or celebrities, who are monitored at every turn.

Hinder family relationships

Technology nowadays offers a plethora of ways to communicate so that the members of each family can keep in touch. From text messaging, Skype, webcams, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and emails. The facilitation of communication is very available. However, there are still times when the face-to-face communication between human being fall through the cracks and technology would take control over a family. Some of the family members do not communicate to each other by face-to-face, just because communicate through technology like social interactive online networking is convenient , they choose to send messages through it and not just walk out of their room and talk. Social interactive online networking like Facebook and MySpace has changed the way family members communicate. As a child of a family, I assumed that the problem was more to be on the child side, such as texting through a family dinner, spending most of the time immersed in Facebook. In my opinion, the families that had the worst relationship were those who overwhelmed by the amount of technology used in their home. I would suggest the families to solve this problem by having a central location for every of their members to communicate or having a specific time for the members to stay together in a place to have talks. This might be helpful in maintaining the relationship of the members and keeping technology from taking over the life of a family.

Conclusion

Computers have enabled a large degree of change in how the world communicates and shares information. With all of the benefits that computer-based communication has brought society as a whole, there are distinct disadvantages when compared to face-to-face conversations. The borders between direct face-to-face and computer-mediated interaction will fade away, but they will never completely disappear. Not all forms of socialization can be transmitted by digital media. There are all kinds of experiments in which scientists try to implement digital duplications of smell and feeling into the computer. It is possible to simulate very limited forms of ‘touching’. But this almost nothing compared to the high sensibility of our tactile organs. Especially for our intimate personal relations this is an enormous disability. Computers will probably never reach a stage of sophistication at which they can mediated direct human interaction completely, for the simple reason that computers don’t have a human body. Human beings know and feel certain things because they have a human body. No organism without a human body will ever know and feel the things in the same way humans do. That’s the crucial reason why computers can never be really intelligent.It is understand that the development of information technology has been changing the way of our live completely. Everything become more easily, but, at the expense of personal contact, as many people choose to work at home in front of a computer screen. This brings the serious dangers for a society which depends on computer screen rather than face-to-face contacts. This matter, not just bring bad side for our society, but also for our health. One of the biggest dangers is that people start to live a life without any social contacts. Everyone (who likes to sit in front of the computer) starts to live in his or her own world, a world dominated purely by their computer screen messages. Living in an illusion that millions of friends are out there always waiting for you. Friends that will support when you have a bad day, or will cheer you up when you are sad. This ‘artificial bubble’ starts burst as soon as people get into real problem, such as losing their job. From that problem, will lead to another problem. Let say, if we like to live our life in front of our computer’s screen, we are getting lazy and not going out for a walk. Our movement gets limited only in our home. This will makes us isolated from the society outside which we might become lonely just communicating with the computer. For me, this is very bad habit for people to get isolated from the real life. Apart from that, depending on a screen rather than meeting face-to-face is very bad for health. It will make our spine back ill. Sitting for a long time and looking to a screen also makes our eyes bad. This will cause healthy problem for us. We always feel not good with our spine back and we also maybe have to wear eyeglasses when we have a problem with our eyes. From my reading, light from the screen can cause bad side for our eyes if we continuously looking at computer screen the whole day long.