How do the internet and gadgets affect our lives? Are social networks able to replace real communication? Why do we feel unhappy when browsing other users’ Facebook pages?
Impairment of privacy
Social networks have deprived us of personal space. Photos from the home album, intended for a narrow circle of relatives and friends, are now on display. Of course, it is possible not to put up photos of your reflection in the toilet mirror in Instagram, but how else to inform everyone that you have passed face control in a fashionable club? The fact that this fact must become public knowledge is beyond doubt.
Facebook and other social networks have played an evil joke on us, taking away our personal lives. At all times, one of the most difficult tasks was to find yourself. “Know yourself and you will know the world,” said the ancient sages.
Surrogates
We pause our lives by curiously exploring other people’s pages on social networks. And… we realize that the people around us are more successful. They go to restaurants more often than we do, travel more, dress more expensively. They have such a happy family and a beautiful car! We don’t realize that we only see a gala portrait, an image version that has passed strict censorship.
Social networks create an illusory planet – like in the American film Surrogates, where people’s lives are lived by android robots bought in a supermarket.
A person has the right to choose a surrogate of his or her own taste, embodying in it all pipe dreams of beauty, youth, strength and sexuality. And while the doll performs representative functions, its owner can lie on the sofa in a tarred robe with unwashed head and cellulite on his hips, enjoying the furor of his “deputy”.
People blow themselves up like balloons on Facebook. When everyone tells you about their parties and successes, you start to embellish your own life. When you’re active on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, you can be a microstar.
On the web, we don’t see the human being, but the technology – a synthesis of ego, translated into numbers. Technological personality is the desire of everyone to like it, it is composed solely of human merits: the ideal image and no disadvantages.
Security is at stake
Social networks have minimized our personal security. And we’re contributing to it in every way possible. For example, with incredible naivety we report on our page in social networks, where and for how long we go to rest (work).
Let’s brag. But in fact, we inform the criminals that we have departed at a safe distance for the thieves, and we indicate the time of their absence. And among criminals, as the experience of law enforcement agencies in different countries shows, there are also very advanced Internet users.
How do gadgets affect children
There is a funny theory that knowledge from previous generations is genetically transmitted, so today’s children are intuitively more advanced users of technology.
Destroy the myth: children navigate the buttons on the computer because, first, they deal with a primitive device that is very easy to use; and second, the computer (TV, phone, etc.) takes 90% of their time.
Gadgets
In one experiment, 70 children tried to live for 8 hours without any means of communication. Only three of them managed to do the task.
Of course, this kind of pastime doesn’t make them any smarter. Touching the touch screen does not develop motor skills. It requires small movements (for example, to draw a small letter, you need to activate many muscles and neurons in the brain).
Computer games do not contribute to the game of imagination, the possibility of any complexity of rebooting the computer does not develop an inquisitive mind, seeking “in everything to get to the very essence.
The main principle of any gadget – to be as friendly to the user as possible, that is, extremely simple and affordable in use. Will it help your baby grow up smart?
Robots take away from a person the thought work that he has to do himself to maintain and develop mental strength. That’s why the more time a child spends in front of a TV, computer or game console, the later he learns to read and the worse he will remember texts. What’s more, it’s much more difficult to master speech.
Always in touch
Are you used to being available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Are you proud to be always in touch? Indeed, being at arm’s length, which is called in touch, is so modern! But is it joyful?
If you are not happy with calls from customers, partners, executives or just acquaintances when you play football with your son or admire the sunset – it’s time to establish your own rules. Because so far you have been adjusting daily (and nightly) to the settings made for you and for you by other people.
So, we have learned to be in touch all the time. At first, it seemed funny and increased self-esteem, as it created another illusion of extraordinary efficiency.
The lack of boundaries between office and work time on one side and personal space on the other made us live in a state of permanent waiting, which we try to satisfy by constantly checking our mail or social networks and keeping an eye on our phone.
Business or digitized social activity displaces personal development, leaving in the first place only what makes money (or creates the illusion of enrichment). Both weekdays and holidays turn into endless working days, business information takes up space that we could (and should) share with friends and family, and the quality of life deteriorates catastrophically.