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Jacob McFarlin Dr. Tracy Miller English 1020 2 April 2012

A Behind the Scenes Look at Social Technology

One of humanitys goals has always been to make life easier and more convenient. Some would say technology plays a vital role in society, such as Paul Levinson, author of Cellphone: The Story of the Worlds Most Mobile Medium and How it has Transformed Everything! Levinson states The restricting and liberating edge of accessibility transforms restaurants, public transport, automobiles, romance, literacy, parent-child relationships, war, and indeed all walks of life, trivial and profound. Like an organic cell that moves, evolves, combines with other cells, and generates, the cellphone has become a complex sparkplug of human life. Indeed, in todays world, technology is making faster computers, more fuel efficient cars, and advanced gadgets that make entertainment far better and more accessible than ever before. Advancements in communication is a prime example. Social technology has created new, revolutionary ways of communicating. Today, its much easier to communicate with others; we can Tweet, tag, instant message, or simply text someone within seconds. The response could be instant. We are not in an old western where one sends a letter by the pony express. This makes for a great and highly interactive society, right? This is not a fairytale or an old western its a horror flick. Though it often goes unnoticed, social technology has negative effects on society.

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Scene I: Impersonal interactions Billy texts his mom at the end of the school day and says he will be home at five oclock. He then sends another text that is more personal- he texts a girl named Julie to tell her she looked cute today. Its so easy to text mom and tell her I will be home at five, or tell Julie shes cute. Whoa. This is where an alarm goes off for me. While nothing is wrong with telling your mom you will be home at five, there is something wrong with more personal types of conversation being texted. Along with the new age of having conversations through text, many relationships are started one person texting another person. Through this, each person can easily get the wrong idea about the other just by taking something said in the wrong way. In fact, Nicole Beland, the author of The Dos and Donts of Texting in Relationships, wrote Teenagers dont know what the other person is thinking or how the person is responding to a text. A girl could be around her friends and say wow look what this loser just texted mewhat a creep. But then she could respond with aww thanks, usually meaning she could be messing with the guys head, which would be harder to do in person. Its this kind of misguiding that texting leads to. Beland makes a great point. If you think about how different talking to someone in person and texting someone is, it is easy to see the big picture of how certain types of conversations should not be texted at all. Along with this, conversations through text are often rapid moving and people easily grow bored. This means that not only do some things get taken wrong, but the two people also grow bored and sometimes lose interest. So, it all comes down to the emotion taken out of the conversations.

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Imagine if Billy had talked to Julie in person. Either he would get the sense that she didnt like him, or she would show signs that she did. Either way, both of them would know where they stood and received accurate feedback from one another. The emotion of the situation would show and Billy would not sound creepy, meaning he wouldnt be misunderstood, and he could see how she reacted to what he said. When emotion is taken out, conversations are not the same as they would be in person. So it seems the more we use technology for conversations, the less feedback and emotion we receive from the other person(s). Wendin Nah, author of Technologys Effect on Interpersonal Communication states we are now more connected in today's globalized world, but are ironically more isolated from our friends and family as a result of the new technologies from the information age. Nah states this perfectly. Even though we are connected in so many ways, I argue that too much communicating through technology does exactly as Nah points out. It used to be that a family would sit down to dinner and talk about their day and any problems they may be having. Today, it is not uncommon that part of the family, if not the whole family, will keep texting all through the meal. This type of distraction means that the members of the family have less of their attention on the conversation at the table, and more towards what their friends are doing.

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Fig. 1 The picture above shows how little attention the family has towards each other at Thanksgiving dinner. From Thanksgiving Table Family Texting by Bryant Arnold, Nov, 2009.

Many critics would make the argument that the majority of households would ban cell phones from the dinner table. Well, according to a survey conducted by T-Mobile, seventy percent of young people (ages eighteen to twenty two) would take a phone call at the dinner table, while fifty-six percent of parents said they would answer. The survey also showed that fourty-five percent of people, young and older, admitted to texting at the dinner table and said it was not a big deal. Are we that addicted to texting? According to Cristen Conger, author of Is Online Social Networking Good or Bad? the University of Maryland did a study to see just how addicted people are to social technology. Two hundred students participated in the study, and each were not allowed to text message or get on social networks for an entire week. The results were incredible. Out of the two hundred students, sixty-two percent said they had more fun while

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being around friends and said they had less stress, twenty percent said they had strong urges to text and get on Facebook, while the last eighteen percent said they were miserable without having neither texting of Facebook. To me, these numbers are staggering. Not only does it hurt family time and values, but it shows that table manners are on the downfall and that social technology may just be addicting. The plot thickens. This is just one of the ways technology is effecting society.

Scene II: Cowardly Criticizing Jim, a seventeen year old boy, posts a video of him playing guitar on Youtube. After a few days, he notices that his video has gotten many views and a lot of comments. Among the comments, are some nice ones, but the ones that stand out are the ones that say vulgar things such as Stop playing and kill yourself. Today, you cannot go onto Youtube without seeing some form of cowardly criticism. What do I mean? Well, on Youtube, people have a screen name. Thats all they have. No profiles, basically no information unless they reveal it in a video. The problem is that this gives any user unlimited power to say anything he or she wants to. This leads to what I call a cowardly way of cyber-bullying. When people have a bad day or just feel like being mean, they can go onto Youtube and post anything they want on any video, while knowing that their identity will remain unknown. Ironically, what people dont know is that a post is never truly deleted. According to Bill Hayes, creator of the Youtube video Social Mediathe Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, when someone posts something online, that information is permanently stored in a database somewhere, where it will stay forever, meaning that, even if someone deletes the post, whatever was posted will be around forever, being completely obtainable by anyone with the

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know how to get it. My question is, how many people would say the same things to the persons face? My guess is that the numbers would dramatically decrease. The most famous example of this is the infamous Friday video made by Rebecca Black. This video became famous due to so much negative criticism and hate going towards it. Ok, so a young girls video was maybe not so great and some people made fun of itbig deal, right? Wrong. According to Daniel Johnson from Blogspot.com, Black took down the video after receiving threats and shocking critiques telling her to remove the video, or else. This is beyond too far. Its one thing to make fun of a video, maybe make a parody or two, but to threaten a young girl, while knowing that no one knows who you are? Thats a coward. And thus, we now see yet another way in which technology is playing its negative role in society.

Part III: False Empowerment In this scene, we see sixteen year old Frank sitting at a computer. Frank, like many teenagers, wants a new, revolutionary idea that will get peoples attention. Frank starts doing research, and stumbles across a website that is trying to stop the slaughtering of innocent seals. Feeling inspired, Frank goes straight to Facebook and posts a picture of a dead seal with the caption Like if you are against inhumane animal slaughter! Bravo. What a way to start a revolution. This is not power. If you were to look back in history at each generation, each one would have some sort of group, such as African Americans fighting for their rights or hippies reaching out for peace. This generation...does not have many of such groups fighting for something they believe in. This is

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not to say these groups do not exist, but I would like to point out that more and more groups are going the cyber way of doing things these days. In the essay Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted, Malcolm Gladwell discusses a group of four African American men, from North Carolina A. & T., go to a local lunch counter, where they are not welcome being that it is 1960, and ask for a cup of coffee. When denied by the waitress, the group of men left, but not before getting the attention of a crowd. Each day, the four men returned. Each day, more people were with them. Each day, the group of people made an impact. This specific example is exactly what I mean. This generation is unknowingly being yielded by social technology, because this generation believes it can make a difference just by posting something on a website. This form of attempted change holds no power. Yes, people may see it and agree or disagree, but, in most cases, a person will see such a post and do nothing at all. Where is the group of rioters? Where are the signs fighting for what we believe in? Compare the numbers of real groups fighting for a cause today versus back in 1960s through the 1980s. Not to go on a rant about the government here, but it sure seems like the government has more control now than before. Why? Because today we type. We dont form a group of people together and make our voices heard. We have a false sense of empowerment when we are online. Encore. Way to go new generation. This scene shows that, yet again, social technology has been abused. Could it be that we are so oblivious and caught up in technology that we do not truly understand how it effects society daily? *Ding ding!* Social technology is going to continue to grow. When faced with a problem, are we going to keep Tweeting about it? Or is it going to take

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something outrageous to happen for us to rip off the mask of texting, social networks, and every other form of convenient communication? When we take a bow at the end of this generation, will we be applauded or will we be the headlines of critics?

Works Cited

Beland, Nicole The Dos and Donts of Texting in Relationships About.com/Dating. 2011. Web. 1 Apr. 2012.

Conger, Cristen. "Is Online Social Networking Good or Bad?." Discovery News. N.p., 28 Apr 10. Web. 2 Apr 2012.

Gladwell, Malcolm Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted. They Say/

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I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.

Hayes, Billy D., auth. "Social Media... the Good, the Bad and the Ugly ." Youtube. N.p., 16 Nov. 2011. Web. 2 Apr 2012.

Johnson, Daniel Negative Impacts of Technology blogspot.com. Clemson University History of American Technology. 23 Mar. 2005. Web. 1 Apr. 2012.

Levinson, Paul Cellphone: The Story of the Worlds Most Mobile Medium and How it has Transformed Everything! California: Ebrary, 2011. Infosearch.mtsu.edu. Web. 1 Apr. 2012.

Nah, Wenbin Technologys Effect on Interpersonal Communication Blogspot.com. Better Interpersonal Communication, 16 Aug. 2008. Web. 1 Apr. 2012.