Negative Impacts of Information Technology

THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON SOCIETY

Technology is the application of knowledge to the practical aims of human life or to change and manipulate the human environment. In this century, technological advancement has made our lives easier and more comfortable. We enjoy higher incomes and better standard of living as a result of progress and development, but rapid advancement of technology has impacted our society globally. According to Power 22, “In 2008, just 16 percent of world’s working population qualified as hyper-connected, but the study predicted that 40 percent of us would soon meet the criteria.” Technology has always improved from time to time, and there will be more people rely on technology. In the future, technology will be replacing many things and people’s life will be easier. However, many people are seeing the benefits of technology only and never look at its impacts. By the way, excessive usages of technology will effects people’s daily life. There are many negative effects of technology which will effects people’s daily life such as language proficiency, social life and health. Although technology has helped us in many fields, but there are still many people do not realise the fact that technology has negative affects society.

The first main point for the negative impacts of information technology on society is poor language proficiency. Language proficiency is the ability of an individual to speak or perform in an acquired language. This is a very serious matter to be concern about this developing information technology on society. This is because the modern technology allows the students to communicate with their families and associates instantly using application such as Line, WeChat and WhatsApp. This application will make life easier to communicate between each other. However, this will cause them to ignore the spelling of different words and the usage of proper grammar. Furthermore, with the increasing amount of information on the web, Internet users may come across inaccurate information and lead to misinformation or even slightly skewed way of thinking. This may confused the student understanding through some information. Students in this generation love to communicate with their friends and tend to make new friends when they are on social networks. However, some of them will face problems when it comes to real world face-to-face communication. They wouldn’t know the differences between communication in social networks and also when they communicate face-to-face. Moreover, they will have problems in communication because they could not pronounce different words correctly. According to Erica Loop (2014) “As an adult, you may know that Mr. Bob’s bio facts are far from true, but that doesn’t mean that your child has the same understanding.” With the poor language proficiency, one might misunderstand the information available on the web. They have to know the good and bad of our technology in this society. As a conclusion, technology does helps people in learning but people misused it in a wrong way. We shall appreciate our technology in this generation and use it wisely but not getting affected into it and have problems in language proficiency. To avoid these problems, we have to lessen the communication on social networks and try to communicate with people around us more often.

Besides, technological improvement will cause a huge impact on social life. This is because consumers rely on communication devices such as smart phone, I-pad, I-pod, Tab for most of their daily tasks. This causes them neglect quality time with their family members as they are busy trying out the new gadgets or new applications available in the market or getting updated to the current trend on the social networks. For example, nowadays teenagers will keep looking and pressing the screen or button on their communication device while they do activities such as eating, watching TV with their family. Sometimes, they pay more attentions to their devices than to their family. The more advanced technology becomes, the more it seems to have control over our lives. Technology has changed human experience nowadays. Nowadays, people spend more time online than ever before and their social life is affected by internet. They like to read the news from the internet instead of newspaper. Also, they also like to chat by using their devices rather than facing each other. This is because they feel that it will save time and money, but this will cause them to be addicted to technology. The addiction comes from not realising that they already found are what they were looking for. According to Siege, 22, “the internet has radically changed nearly every level of human experience in an incredibly short amount of time.” With advanced technology, human tend to rely on technology devices in short time. Moreover, the revolution made many previously impossible things that include accessing personal data and information of Internet users that they might never meet. Through the internet, people could post and share links, statuses, pictures, comments and even vent their feelings to other internet users. They can also look through other users’ personal information which would include vital information such as age, birthday, and marital status to know more about the particular person. This will give way to cybercrime. For example, illegal acts, privacy invasion, and even confidential information stealing. Although technology do have their advantages, but as with many revolutionary inventions, they can radically change our lives, for better or worse.

Moreover, the advancement of technology not only negatively affected our language proficiency and social life but also our health. Most teenagers and white-collar worker spend numerous hours in front of computer screen without any intense physical activity which may lead to injuries such as lumbar injuries and carpal tunnel syndrome. It is undeniable fact that computer is a vital machine for many different jobs and activities, even in learning, for adults, adolescents and children. However, the long hours of computer can contribute to increasing chance for an injury. “ The more tech-time that a child engages in, the less likely it is that will get in his daily dose of physical activity”. For example, if children play too much computer games, they might experience physical and psychological problems. With higher technology, people are prone to addicted and lazy. This is because people are too dependent on the technology available today. People no longer need to leave their home for entertainment purpose and they can find the answer to anything with the web browser, Google. With the advancement of mobile phone, people do not even bother to memorise phone numbers anymore. Also, mobile phone users can download games, video and music to keep them entertained. As time pass, they forget about the people around them and addicted to the small gadgets on their hand. For instance, when we are at the restaurant, what we usually see is teenagers busy with their gadgets and even children, they no longer running around and make noise as the gadgets kept them accompanied. With excessive usage of electronic gadgets, it will weaken people’s memory and harm their eye sights. “I think modern information technology greatly simplifies our life, because a lot of what we no longer need to keep in mind, but basically there are a number of things that we will not search in the Internet every time we need it, so computer or smart phone can replace human memory”. People no longer need memorise things they need as their computer or smart phone can assists them in this matter. For example, when shopping for grocery one can simply list down on their smart phone and get it at the mall. Consequently, this will lead to a weaker memory as people rarely store information in their mind. When we look at things that are closer to our face we are likely to blink lesser than when we look at distant objects. This will cause our eyes to be drier when we spend long hours using electronic gadgets and consequently harm our eye sight. If we do not manage our usage of technology wisely, it eventually will weaken our immune system.

In a nutshell, we believe the advancement of technology has negatively impacted our language proficiency, social life and health. Poor language proficiency should be countered by having more communication through internet using proper grammar and correct spellings of different words, having face-to-face communication more frequently or reading more newspaper to improve the language proficiency. We should manage our usage of technology devices by reducing the usage of smartphone for long hours, learn how to communicate and mingle with people around us and make it a habit to write in proper sentences using correct spelling and grammar. Next regarding social life, we should spend quality time with our family and friends. Moreover, try not to store most of our personal information as it might harm our safety. Lastly, regarding to health, if forced to work for long hours in front of the computer screen, we should take breaks in between to stretch our body and relax our eyes. Furthermore, society must be able to utilise technology while not allowing it to handicap social interactions, particularly for those who are easily influenced during our formative years. Our world must learn to embrace technology without allowing it to negatively impact the creation of functional adults in society. According to Greg Satell (2013), “Technology, like most human things, is a double edged sword, involving gain and loss, merit and demerit.” In conclusion, the more advanced technology becomes, the more it seems to have control over our lives.