Is technology bad for us?
The news I hate the most is the news about how technology is killing us. Killing our libido, killing our friendships, our marriages, killing our children in their beds. I hate news about how social networks are halting our emotional development, how Facebook is quicksand, a swamp of insecurity. How our phones are clean windows into lonely deaths. How they make us worse.
I don't hate this news because it's false, necessarily – I hate it because it makes everybody fear the inevitable, and I hate it because the only answer it offers to these doomsday predictions is to "switch it off". Switch it off and look outside, to the fields, to the Tesco bags hooked on branches, to the sky, grey with promise. Switch it off and look into the real world. And this is where our problems start. Here, at this green belt of on/off switches, at this impossible border. Because the longer we insist on distinguishing between online and real life, the worse things get.
Director Beeban Kidron's new documentary In Real Life is about the effects of the internet on young people. As the opening credits rolled, I feared more news of the news I hate she asks: "What exactly is the internet and what is it doing to our children?", a question that reeks of reactionary apocalypse. But in walking through the internet narratives we're almost immune to – the problem with boys and porn, gay teenagers finding love, the devastating suicide of a bullied child – and by interviewing the people who build and comment on it, she comes to some bleak but nuanced conclusions, ones that lead to more questions – about freedom, addiction, anonymity, cash. And it made me think about our options, aside from just turning our screens black.
Real life doesn't just happen when you're looking into someone's eyes. It happens in a series of open tabs, at a speed of clicks. It happens on screen. To dismiss this half of our world as "unreal" leads to people believing their actions there, behind a cartoon avatar and cartoon name, have no repercussions. That a racist insult typed out on a laptop has less weight than one shouted across a carpark. That in "unreal life" it's not a person you're shouting at on Twitter, it's a hologram. A shadow. It's the same naivety that leads to the thinking that in our "unreal life" everything is free and nothing really matters.
So instead of switching off the internet, the conversation should be about how to change it. How to clarify what we're giving for what we take. And the responsibility should not be with young people, in their WiFi-reliant worlds – it should be with the massive corporations that profit from them. As with cigarette packets (their photos of messy lungs a stark reminder of the choice you're making), so should the internet be required to advertise its risks, to alert you to where your data is being held. Because this is not just somewhere we play. The internet is where we live.
Article Sources: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/13/internet-computers-technology-life-online
Image Source: http://transcosmos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/technology-customer-support1-2000x1200.jpg
VOCABULARY WORDS:
1. Libido [n] - the energy associated with the desires.
2. Inevitable [ad] - certain to happen unavoidable
3. Apocalypose [n] - an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale
4. Distinguishing [adj] - to set apart as different.
5. Nuanced [adj] - characterized by subtle shades of meaning or expression
6. Bleak [adj] - without hope or encouragement depressing dreary.
7. Repercussions [n] - an effect or result.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
1. What exactly is the internet for you? What do you use it for?
2. What is it doing to our children? To you?
3. Do you think technology is good or bad? Why?
4. Is technology killing us? In what way?
5. What are 3 good and bad things about modern technology?
6. Do you agree or disagree to the writer’s argument? Discuss your answer.
