Personal Culture Paper

Evolution is Inevitable

While some people argue that technology is helping our society grow, we often tend to overlook the ways in which our immersion into digital devices have harmed us. The societal need for instantaneous knowledge and communication has lead people in the direction of isolation rather than affinity. Despite the common belief that social media connects people, there are arguments that it actually does the opposite. As people become more dependent on virtual worlds to be their form of communication, they begin to lose their ability to connect with people on a more personal level. People are inclined to overthink situations if a person doesn’t answer right away or if they doesn’t ‘like’ the content one posts online. The psychological effect on people of this generation in specific has drastically altered from generations in the past in ways that are detrimental to our health.

Social media outlets were created with the intention of aiding people in becoming and remaining connected with other people who are not physically in their vicinity; however, as time has gone on, the addiction to these virtual realities have proven to be more detrimental than beneficial to our psychological health. In Lasn’s paper, he acknowledges that “mood disorders have increased in each successive generation throughout the 20^th century” (Lasn). This evidence suggests that as more people become reliant on technology, our minds are becoming polluted by the societal fallacies that are presented to us online. As people become more reliant on social media, they typically become more susceptible to fall into this category of people who suffer from mental disorders caused by technology.

A human's natural reaction is to connect with other humans. In my opinion, I believe that we, as humans, are losing our ability to connect with others simply because our world's generally revolve around our devices. In other terms, I think that we should shift towards lessening our need for social media. This type of outlet was originally created to connect people virtually, but has unfortunately caused more people to become susceptible to having an inability to give the necessary attention to the person they are physically with, simply because their devices take priority. An example of how technology has affected us can be seen through our relationships with others both online and in person. During Turkle’s Ted Talk lecture, she expresses that “human relationships are rich and messy and demanding; and we clean them up with technology” (Turkle). This quote acknowledges that people are meant to have imperfect relationships, yet when they are given an outlet that makes them able to interact with one another ‘instantaneously’ it can be easy for someone to be whoever they want to be, even if it isn’t truly his or her personality. Technology created social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter that have created outlets for people to share content with others through the web. It can be made simple for people to enhance who they are online because he or she does not have the pressure of real life interactions where one is forced to be themself. She stresses in both this lecture and her book that we live a lifestyle of being connected in a virtual sense, but slightly alone in our physical interactions.

As time goes on, technology will keep advancing as it has proven to do in the past, thus creating this insatiable need to keep up with the latest products. Our reliance on technology for everyday tasks made Dr. Baurlin argue that we are the dumbest generation. In my opinion, I believe that this accusation is inaccurate, because technology gives people the information they desire quickly and easily, which benefits us since we live in a fast paced world. In his paper, Dr. Baurlin expresses that while kids are online, “they get ridiculed for original thought, good writing" (Baurlin). Personally, I would agree with this statement to an extent, because people do get mocked for using proper sentence structure when posting content online; however, I do not believe that this topic can be an argument to stand up for his thesis that we are the dumbest generation. Social media is not an outlet that is meant to be taken that seriously, which is why people don’t care as much about grammar mistakes. At the same time, this may not be the case for all people, as the perpetual exercising of incorrect grammar in texts and posts somewhat can have an affect on some people’s literary habits.

Overall, the societal need for technology has not decreased because people will continue to buy technology as it enhances since people always want the best product out there. The problem with technology is that it will never disappear because evolution is inevitable and we, as humans, strive to evolve. This may be an issue for future generations since this generation now is already pretty attached to our devices and the simplicity of technology.

Works Cited

Bauerlein. (2015). The Dumbest Generation. Retrieved from

http://archive.boston.com/lifestyle/gallery/dumbestgeneration?pg=9

Lasn, K. (2000). Culture Shock. Ecology of the Mind. 9-17.

Turkle, S. (2012, April). Connected, but alone? Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7Xr3AsBEK4&feature=youtu.be