Unit 1 Draft
Source: #3
Alter, Adam. “Why Our Screens Make Us Less Happy.” Ted.com, 2017, www.ted.com/talks/adam_alter_why_our_screens_make_us_less_happy/up-next?language=en.
This Ted Talk by Adam Alter, a Psychology and Business
Professor, successfully displays why technology/screens makes us less happy,
but he does not completely ignore the miraculous capabilities of technology
that are useful. When Adam Alters recognizes and alludes to the obvious
positives of screens, it greatly increases his credibility from the viewers
perspective. Through this Ted Talk, he details how top Silicon Valley executives
limit their kids screen time. 75% of the students at the Waldorf School of the Peninsula
in Silicon Valley is made up of Silicon Valley executives’ children. The
Waldorf School of the Peninsula, doesn’t introduce screens until the 8th
grade. Silicon Valley executives who eat, sleep and breathe screens, send their
kids to schools that remove them from screens until age 13. The New York times
reporter asked Steve Jobs, “Your kid’s must love the iPad?” Steve Job’s
response was, “They haven’t used it. We limit how much technology our kids use
at home.” Adam Alter found that people spend 3 times as much time on
applications that don’t make them happy, rather than the ones that make them
happy. The dating, browsing, social networking and gaming applications that
people spend the most time on actually make people unhappy or upset. People
spend so much time on these applications because they have removed stopping cues.
With a book you finish a chapter, in a television show the episode ends, but,
on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tinder among many others they removed all stopping
cues and you can scroll forever. Companies and people who have put in measures
to limit screen use have had really strong responses, their “life becomes more colorful, richer, more interesting -- you have better conversations.”
The author’s project I believe is to teach people of the
easily ignorable detriments of screen use, and open people’s eyes to the possibilities
and happiness that can be achieved if you just put your phone in airplane mode
and take a breath. But he does not only detail the problems and negative
effects, he also provides solutions. Do not choose a time such as 5-6PM every
day to turn off your phone, but to schedule it around events every day. We eat
every single day, put your phone away at the meal. At first, Adam Alter agrees,
you may suffer from severe “FOMO”, but once you fight that temptation you will try
and expand that break from your screens. The project presented as a speech and
presentation, was both extremely effective and provided additional positive
elements that could only be elicited through a video presentation. Through the presentation
genre, the speaker was able to provide visuals to set the scene, tonal cues and
use hand motions to effectively share his perspective. Often times in writing
and other mediums, there can be a misrepresentation because you cannot hear
tonal cues or see visual cues. The author was immensely successful, as he
clearly, credibly and effectively shared his point of view which was backed up by
research and academic findings. Furthermore, this presentation perfectly fits
into the dialogue of my portfolio, as I look to explore the impact of technology
and screens.
Source: #2
Citation: Weinstein, Aviv, et al. “Internet Addiction Is Associated with Social Anxiety in Young Adults.” Amazonaws.com/Academia.edu.documents, Annals of Clinical Psychiatry, 2015, s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/42846485/Internet_addiction_is_associated_with_so20160219-31054-yd8sni.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1537840694&Signature=nITvm9rBMVCwp0TU5s7uabHLOC8%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DInternet_addiction_is_associated_with_so.pdf.
This study aimed to discover whether there is a correlation
between Problematic Internet Use (PIU) or excessive Internet use and social
anxiety, which is characterized by the study as “excessive or poorly controlled
preoccupations, urges, or behaviors regarding computer use, and Internet access
that leads to impairment or distress.” The results yielded that there was no
difference between males and females’ levels of internet addiction, nor did
they find a particular social network that yielded higher levels of social
anxieties. The study’s results reaffirm previous evidence of the “co-occurrence
of Internet addiction and social anxiety.”
The authors project here was to either affirm or deny
previous studies that linked social anxiety and PIU. The study included 240
students, with the mean age for women as 23, and the mean age for men was 25.
The study included an equal amount of males and females. The second hypothesis
was to determine whether men or women were more likely to be addicted to the
internet.
The genre of the source is a research article from an
accredited university, University of Ariel in Israel. The project by the
Department of Behavioral Science and Science influenced the source by making it
the research article more formal, scientific in the layout as they followed the
scientific method, and finally by making their argument heavily supported by
numbers. The genre also influenced the project; if the genre wasn’t a research
article by a university and was a tweet, the researcher would not have had to
extrapolate data, structure it so properly or have had this data heavily vetted
and approved for publishing.
I thought that this project was extremely thorough, they
developed a test that measured IAT( Internet Addiction Score), the researchers
were also very methodical using many very appropriate statistical tools to
evaluate(based on the few courses I have taken in statistics). The only issue
that I have with this study is that the sample size is made up of only students
from Israel, which is one of the smaller countries in the world. The culture of
internet use and addiction can vary widely based on country and culture. While,
I do think that the results would be the same if performed in the United
States, we cannot say that the results apply for the United States students.
The success level of this research and my assessment are directly related. I
believe that the research was very successful in providing further evidence to
the detriments of social anxiety and Internet Addiction, but sample size was
from an extremely minority country in the world.
This source undoubtedly fits into my larger goal of this
project, to prove that there are significant detriments of excessive internet
use on youth, but they are not just limited to social anxiety which was
explored here. It was extremely helpful, that they took a step further and
analyzed whether specific social networking platforms provide more social
anxiety, as the conclusion was no specific correlation. As stated in the
conclusion portion of this study, “The results of the study support previous
evidence for cooccurrence of Internet addiction and social anxiety, but further
studies need to clarify this association.” As, I previously mentioned this
small sample from this small nation needs to studied further in other
countries. I especially liked this study because it alluded to one of my
considerations which was the increased internet use over time, and its effect
on adolescents as well. Another reason I was drawn to this research over others
was that they broke down the social anxiety into specific characteristics that
did have a correlation. As indicated here, “Our results support findings of
previous research showing an association between poor social skills and
excessive Internet use and that in males fear, anxiety, and depression were
correlated positively with cognitions about problematic Internet use.” Another
statement which specified characteristic correlations was “Furthermore,
problematic Internet users were more neurotic and less extraverted, more
socially anxious and emotionally lonely, and gaining greater support from
Internet social networks than average Internet users.”
Source: #1
Denis Baron’s, “ From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of
Literacy Technologies” takes the reader through a brief history of a few of the
most world altering communication technologies. These technologies include,
writing, the pencil, telephone and computer. Baron walks the reader through the
potential adoption process of a new communication technology, first it is
restricted to only a few, then as costs decrease and hesitations from the
general public simmer down public adoption will catch. Finally, the
accessibility of the technology will reach broader markets and successfully
alter how people communicate. This piece
I believe falls under the category of a historical essay, and through this
essay the Baron aims to provide a historical, non-biased, informative view
point of how literacy technology has transformed over time.
I did find this essay extremely informative and interesting
how Baron’s provided analysis on the often overlooked and oversimplified path
to electronic communication. Therefore, based on the perceived purpose of this
essay it was very successful in shedding light, and walking the reader through
the history of literacy technologies evolution; along with the many
efficiencies and advancements that stemmed from it. One example of the success
of this piece in explaining evolution of literacy technology and successfully
providing a backdrop can be found under the conclusion section, “Even the
pencil itself didn’t escape the wrath of educators. One of the major
technological advances in pencil-making occurred in the early twentieth century,
when manufacturers learned to attach rubber tips to inexpensive wood pencils by
means of a brass clamp.” The success of this piece is illustrated here; where
Baron describes the historical pattern of adoption of literacy technology and
where he begins to elegantly describe one of the greatest advancement being the
eraser and the wrath with hesitance of adoption. Every single day, over 4
billion people use their phones to communicate through Twitter, Facebook,
texting, writing and more all through this 5 inch by 2 inch device. This all
stemmed from a wood and graphite. This article is fitting for what the course
is centered around which is technology; I also find it quite enlightening,
because this article has gotten me to start thinking about the negative effects
that technologies evolution has had on the development of society.
While this essay did provide an accurate history and a
glimpse of the problematic nature of relying too heavily on typing, which I
will provide examples, it did not go far enough in explaining the detrimental
nature of relying too heavily on typing, computers and text. Don’t get me wrong
computers and text processing make life so much easier, efficient and accurate
for everyone in many ways, but there are some innate negative effects that are
often ignored in this piece. Under the section, “What Writing Does Differently”
it begins to allude to the many problems of communication through technology.
“Writing lacks such tonal cues of the human voice such as pitch and stress,”
this is one of the many significant problems with the transition to text;
messages are often misconstrued and incorrectly interpreted because people
cannot properly convey tonal cues. Furthermore, this article overlooks that
kids don’t learn as well on computers, writing by hand yielded significantly
better retention of information verses typing. Additionally, millennial's along
with the next generation are lacking social skills and overall development,
because they were born into a world of communicating through technology, rather
than face to face. Furthermore, youth specifically are denied the opportunity
to make mistakes without consequences. The final reason, that I believe text,
typing and computing is so harmful is that everything is posted or shared on
social media communication outlets within minutes, denying people the ability
to live and learn from mistakes. While computing, text processing and the
overall evolution of literacy technology undoubtedly increased efficiencies and
can be attributed to so many successes today, it is vital to identify the
weaknesses of technological communication methods.