On the very first day of my last summer course of my
undergraduate career, I entered a course devoted to exploring issues facing the Millennial generation. Throughout the
weeks of this course, I have heard opinions from all of my classmates about how
they perceive political issues of education, employment, and family life. Periodically, I would bring up the articles and discussions to my best
friend, Jihan, who is a fellow first generation American. I found that
both she and I had vastly different perceptions of what the biggest issues of
our generation were than many of my classmates. To us, things such as too many people being educated or having high employment expectations or parents choosing to stay home with their kids were no issue at all. In our perspective, the increased use of technology was the source of many of our generation's problems. I began asking my other first generation friends what they thought the biggest issue was facing our generation, and I kept getting variations of the same answer: social media, the internet, technology, facebook, smart phones- our addiction to the internet.
After an initial survey, I remembered an excerpt from the course description on the syllabus,
“With each unit, we’ll ask why some issues become the subject of intense political debate while others are ignored, and why we may not see reform even when an issue is solidly on the radar.”
Issues of the proper role of technology, the internet, and
social media and the way in which it integrates into nearly every problem that
we face as Millennials is one of those strange issues that both is ignored and
simultaneously present, yet without intensity or movements for reform. While technology
has undoubtedly improved our quality of life,
what are the costs? Now, instead of spending time in the library, we simply google whatever we need to know for class. Now, there are over 7 million students taking online courses and we see a push for more online education, yet these students consistently perform worse than their in-class counterparts. Now, instead of walking up to a potential employer, handing him a resume, shaking his hand and filling out an application while making an impression, we are generally told to go apply online where software filters out potential matches. Then, once the application is in,employers seek out any information they can get and 70%
of human resources employees won't hire a candidate based on
their social media activity. We are then supposed to start a family, and as parents we will struggle to cope with the negative
influence
of
technology
on their
families by experimenting with strategies we find on the internet to somehow pull our kids away from the screen and build a healthy family.
I leave you with a parting question; should we find a way to change the reach of technology into our personal lives? And if you do not think technology is the biggest overarching issue facing our generation, what is?
I think that technology most certainly is the biggest overarching issue of our generation, largely in part because it is what defines our generation (Millenium --> Y2K, etc). When our parents and teachers talk about us, they talk about the iPhone and Facebook-- and while we sit in our collegiate classes with our laptops, mindlessly peruse social media and YouTube, 'google' instead of lugging huge textbooks around the library, I can't help but worry if our instant access to information hinders us more than it helps us, in terms of maintaining valuable human contact.
ReplyDeleteAs a Millennial, I'd be devastated without technology at my fingertips, but when I consider my Dad, who still can't type on a computer keyboard, I realize that having instant access to ALMOST everything isn't necessarily beneficial to me unless I'm doing some sort of research. In fact, it's funny that you mention censoring our social media in order to keep our private lives out of the employment sphere. But the internet allows us to post everything that's private for all the world to see. And while this may be beneficial in collaborative research efforts, I find that the technology that we have is often abused and/or taken for granted, gets us into heaps of trouble, and makes us (sometimes) look like fools...
On a small scale, if we want to make changes, we need to incentivize ourselves to become less reliant on technology, and more reliant on personal contact. However, in the grand scheme of things, having technology brings us closer to people and information in an entirely new and revolutionary way.
Thank you for bringing up the issue of choice. It is true that we now have the potential to do things unimaginable even 50 years ago. I think that we could be more responsible in our choices to use technology. Maybe it is the fact that all of these things are still relatively new to the world and we need time to adjust. Through trial and error we may be able to push the limits of technology use until we realize what we like and what we don't. I agree this is a very complex issue with no clear solution, especially since we are all accustomed to having access to everything all of the time.
DeleteI would agree that technology has become over reaching to a point. The portrait of technology use that you painted, Noelle, is definitely scary and probably terrifying for people from older generations. However, for as much as there are negative aspects of technology and its effects on our social lives and personal behaviors, I think that there is equal good. Actually, I don't know if there is more "good" or "bad," but I would argue that the "good" is good enough to say that technology is more of an opportunity for our generation than a hindrance.
ReplyDeleteThe question is not about technology's presence in our lives, I would argue, but how we put it to use. For example, people were concerned about how the use of social media like Facebook were affecting young people's school work and sociability. It turns out, however, that it's not a matter of use, but rather how it's used. The NYT wrote about this:
"While overall time spent on Facebook negatively affected G.P.A., the results were not clear-cut. As it turned out, those who frequently shared links on Facebook or checked the site to see what friends were up to tended to have higher grades. Those students who posted status updates tended to have lower grades. Mr. Junco found a direct relationship between site use and out-of-class sociability: the more time a student spent on Facebook, the more likely that student was to be involved with extracurricular activities." (http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/fbook-grades/?_r=0)
I have also seen how technology can have a normalization effect -- in the sense that it expands the boundaries of what is deemed "normal." For example, I am a doula and so I follow pregnancy blogs and other related things online. I've seen how natural childbirth, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, etc. has become less stigmatized via mass sharing on instagram, Facebook, etc. Women who previously felt isolated are finding communities online, and it is so powerful to witness.
As far as the "biggest overarching issue" I just put a post answering that. But I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that the issue is the proper role of technology in our lives. I think that the biggest problem is that the use of technology in our lives is a largely unexamined phenomenon on a personal and a societal level. Technology of every kind has drawback and benefits; the same science that can provide relatively safe and incredibly bountiful electric energy can also make a bomb that wipes out millions in a flash. When we are confronted with new technology it seems that we unfortunately just use it, with out thinking too hard about how or why, or what is the worst that could come of it. When we were discussing, for instance, how incredible it is that we now have near unlimited information at our finger tips. Lost is the question of what that means and what consequences that might have. A study out of Columbia suggests that internet use is affecting our memory through the process of transactive memory. Essentially our brains are adapting to remember HOW to look up information and not remembering what we actually looked up. So is this information really informing who we are, is that a good or bad thing? I feel like there are some very essential questions that are just not explore on a large scale. There is even evidence that the biological infrastructure of our brains is changing in response to the new interfaces we deal with on a daily basis. Again, not making judgment, but worried we aren't worried.
ReplyDeleteI am planning to go into business developing new technology, and am an admirer of the promises of technology that Ayn Rand presents in Atlas Shrugged. That we might cast off the yokes of industry and labor, and fulfill our higher potential to live lives of art and science. It worries me though that we seem to serve the technology as much as it serves us. With every new device's promise of increasing productivity, it seems we are not getting more done in eight hours, rather enabling ourselves to work more hours. So again, I don't think any technology is inherently good or bad, but we need to put in the hard work of determining how we want it to serve us.
I’m so happy you decided to write this post, Noelle! It was great talking it through with you in our blog workshop the other day – it also largely inspired my final blog post, which comments on how technology negatively impacts the ways that we experience art.
ReplyDeletePlaying devil’s advocate though, aren’t we possibly undermining the many benefits that technology and social media provide our society? From creating increased access to education, to providing new and faster forms of communication, our generation is given a toolkit that basically presents us with endless possibilities. How we use and/or abuse these resources is absolutely a conversation worth having…but I think it’s important to separate those two points.
I personally don’t think technology is the biggest issue that we face today…but I’m not sure I can point to a definitive alternate. If I had to answer, I guess I’d say the biggest challenge we have to overcome is our predisposition to think as individuals as opposed to an interconnected population of people. The biggest roadblocks we’re poised to face – our environment, our economy, our education system – have to be solved by an electorate who truly considers themselves part of something bigger.
I agree that technology perpetuates individualistic thought…but I don’t think it’s the root or primary challenge that our Gen Y needs to be gearing up for. Maybe we just need to think about how we use and work with technology as a catalyst to fix everything else out there.