The Sociological Effects of Digital Technology

For this blog, I will attempt to analyze the sociological effects the digital age had and is still having on us. First, however, I will provide a brief history lesson of the subject at hand.

It is not surprising that this issue has turned into a hot debate amongst professionals from various fields. Long before the internet and other digital tools were created, new forms of media "have always caused moral panics: the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks, and television were once denounced as threats to their consumer's brainpower and moral fiber." (Pinker, 2010)

One of the more obvious effects of digital tools, including but not limited to video games, is alienation. In Mix It Up, David Grazian explores the feeling of total flow experienced by those that are totally immersed in mediums like online games. Players who fall into this state slowly become disconnected from the real world and lose the feeling of the passing of time, which Grazian says is illustrative of the increased levels of loneliness and alienation. 

Another effect of digital environments, such as social networks, is the small degree to which someone living in the digital age has control over his or her social identity. Palfrey and Gasser, co-authors of the book Born Digital, provide an example of a 16 year old girl living in the agrarian age. If that girl wanted to change her social identity, how others view her, she could travel to a distant land and start a whole new life with a new social identity. With the rise of the digital era, however, this dramatic change has become near-impossible. If this girl was living nowadays, her social identity would probably be greatly influenced by her online interaction with family members, peers, and online friends, thanks to digital environments like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Keek, along with the other various social networks and hubs of communication that belong to the internet.

If we take a look at who exactly has access to and uses these fancy digital mediums and social networks, we notice immediately yet another effect of digital tools that we see in everyday life--social inequality. This is because the poor and those of the lower working class usually do not have access to things like social networks and online video games. As a result, their social identity is much less complex and less rich than those who are privileged enough to own and use such tools.  

  

My 8 year old brother with his Ipad

                 

My Ipad in his age

                                                                                                                  

These were, in summary, some of the sociological effects the digital age and its accompanying tools are having on us. What other effects can you think of? 

Trust in the digital age

In a world ruled by social networking sites and digital technology, our ability to trust those on the other side of the connection has gone extremely low that we sometimes doubt the profiles and accounts of our own friends and relatives.

Megan Meier, a victim of cyber bullying and spam accounts who was pointed to in David Grazian's book, was fooled in believing that the person she was in contact with on her MySpace account was real. Though she never discovered the truth, the fake account, which she was bullied through, was made by her previous friend’s mother! Doesn’t this make you think twice about adding strangers to your profiles and online accounts? Or to be more specific, doesn’t it make you hesitate to add too much personal information on your online profiles? 

Although we might be honest about our own personal information in these sites, Grazian pointed to the others who exaggerate and strategically design their online profiles and behaviors in self-interested ways-As most teenagers now measure their popularity by the number of friends they have on Facebook. The damage incurred by those spam profiles and accounts take many forms and have different motives behind them. Megan’s case demonstrates one of the forms that these profiles could be used in, while in the movie Trust it takes a different path though it presents a similar situation.

The movie is not that much different then what happened to Megan. As, fourteen year old, Annie, meets her first boyfriend online and-unsurprisingly-she finds out that he is not what he originally claimed to be.

The ease with which information flows online among otherwise discrete interpersonal networks has obvious consequences for how we maintain control over our reputation and identity as mentioned in Grazian's book. One of those consequences is cyber bulling which is now more common among young people.

Unlike physical bullying, electronic bullies remain virtually anonymous using temporary email accounts and other social networking ways to mask their identity according to Wikipedia. The feeling that they are not being supervised frees their behaviors form any sense of responsibility. Moreover, when teenagers know more about computers and technology than their parents do, they are able to operate them without concern that the parent will discover their experience with bullying.