The Rise Of The Digital Age

A Book Review on The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future by Mark Bauerlein

Social media has guided us to believe that we need to be connected to others. “…the social media revolution has not made us feel more connected, less lonely, or replete with friends” (Barna Group). Social media has input certain beliefs into the minds of people while also taking away that time that could be spent with friends and family. Social media has allowed people to put on fronts and believe that these are the only means of communication.

Tannen believes that much of this breakdown is caused by the lack of people interacting face to face. She feels that our high tech world infused with social networking, email, cell phones, texting and more has given people a way to communicate without actually connecting with each other. “The proliferation and increasing portability of technology isolates people in a bubble-” warns Tannen.

In “Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.” by Sherry Turkle a Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been studying the psychology of online connectivity for more than 30 years. For the past five years, she has been focusing on topics: What has happened to face‐ to‐face conversation in a world where so many people say they would rather text than talk, families, friendships and romance. She has also studied schools, universities and workplaces. Among this topics she has talked and provided studies on how we have become distant from “who we are.” She reports that we as a society have lost a lot of virtues as a society such as a lack of empathy for one another, solitude, and communication with one another. As the “digital world” continues to grow we as a society continue to grow with it and apart from one another. Sherry also emphasizes that we

I agree with William Deresiewicz, in the sense that we rely on technology and social media websites too much for our real social experience. Now days, it doesn’t take just a couple minutes to send out a mass social media post to let the world know what we have

Like a mosquito, technology carries a fever-causing virus: the virus of idealism. “As the use of social media continues to evolve; the concept of presenting our ideal selves versus our real selves has become more and more prevalent on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, and even LinkedIn” (Green). Somewhere social media, people have lost the ability to truly take time and understand the people around them. t is not upon an individual’s lack of thought that is to blame but the warped sense of reality expressed through these social media sources. For most people, a look at their friend’s posts will bring upon comparison. Why does she have a life? How come she gets to go on vacation? Why does he seem so happy with his significant other? Idealism, and an environment of solely perfection and happiness is perpetuated. There is a sense of loneliness and guilt which comes with this seemingly perfect image of life. It is human nature to wish to be understood, but yet, idealism teaches people to retreat into themselves, to show only perfections and never let people know of unhappiness. As a result,

The ease with which people are able to share and communicate over the Internet has had the effect that people no longer feel the need to interact in with one another in person because they feel that everything they want to do can be done over the Internet. An example can be seen in “Connectivity and its Discontents”, where we are introduced to Randy (Turkle 621). Randy’s younger sister was recently engaged to be married, something that most people would consider a significant event. She and her fiance decided to make the announcement to their family and friends via e-mail, something that made Randy feel very far away from his sister emotionally. Social media can also have the effect that constantly updating our information and giving second by second updates on the ordinary events of our daily

Take a minute and allow me to paint a picture of the past for you. Let’s go back to just 1994 when cell phones were almost obsolete. The wealthy and rich had access to bag phones and Motorola commercial phones of which costed an arm and a leg per minute. If one wanted an update on a family member or friend, you could not simply just shoot a text or take a peek at Facebook; one actually had to pick up a land line or travel for face to face interaction. Not having many technological luxuries promoted a simpler lifestyle, one with better social interaction and communication skills. Now, fast-forward to the technology driven society. The society we live in today lacks the face to face communication skills, struggles with identity fluidity, and holds an extreme compulsion to be connected to technology every hour of the day.

As the use of technology surges, mankind’s behavior evolves in a strange way. People have paid so much attention to being up to date with social media, friends and the news that they have lost the ability to communicate and have an actual conversation. Additionally, our compulsion to the Internet has resulted in the tendency of people getting paranoid, not being able to self-reflect and be who they actually are. The pressure of perfection we have inhibited from the Internet has cost us the simplicity of life and what it has to offer. We walk on ground that has held us, fed us and grew us, and yet some of us don’t have a single ounce of gratitude. We talk to people and vent to them but when it’s our time to listen, we only pay attention to what matters to us. We have grown into a selfish species that only thinks of themselves and what benefits them because the Internet has thought us to be efficient instead of passionate.

Technology has advanced a lot over the years and changed society from the way we communicate and the way we view things. Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat are used everyday to keep in touch with one another. Technology helps communication become easier and faster, but people are socializing less in person because they have their phones with them and things that you don’t want to be on the internet can end up on the internet.

The written word,now a weapon, is now digitized and feed through media. “A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon.” (Bradbury 58). Not only have books become a media revolution so has social interaction. Social media allows for connections formerly unheard. “The problem, they say, is that we spend so much time maintaining superficial connections online that we aren’t dedicating enough time or effort to cultivating deeper real-life relationships.”(WSJ). This avenue of socialization allows for discretion of the true life and person of the poster. “And even worse, the human condition is beginning to devolve. We have become addicted to the vanity of social media unable to expose our lives to the world.”(Green). This media based socialization can overtake the lives of many. “When you add it all up, the average American spends more than 10 hours a day plugged into some form of media.”(Synder). Making the human race even more technology

Society has a lot of downfalls, whether if it is the traffic light dysfunctions, the horrible pedestrian rules, or the unfair healthcare policies. However, one thing that has truly diminished our society as a whole is the use of social media. Social media has really taken a toll on every age group in America. Individuals are so obsessed with creating a perfect life on social media that expensive gourmet meals, lavishing vacation spots and endless partying are shown on a daily basis. These same people are those who live in two-bedroom apartments, own cheap clothing and eat “TV dinner” as a three-course meal. It is pretty sad that our world has come to the point that “faking” is the new “making”.

Advancements in technology are supposed to make our lives easier. The time it takes for us to travel to another destination continues to shorten. Computers continue to advance at a rapid pace. Communicating with family and friends from another country has become easier than ever. It would seem as if everything is perfect. However, that is not the case at all. The irony of it all is that inventions that were supposed to make us connected to people close to us have actually had the opposite effect. Devices such as mobile phones, tablets, television, and laptops are just a few inventions that have us obsessed over them during our free time. With the advent of social media, we have become more engrossed in

Throughout this essay I will be discussing how the digital age has transformed society in many ways. The digital age also known as the information age, is the evolution of technology in daily life and social organizations have led to the fact that the modernization of information and communication processes has become the driving force of social evolution.” This is a time period in which we live in now where Internet and email are available; this is an example of the digital age. The Information Age is the idea that access to and the control of information is the defining characteristic of this current era in human civilization.

Most of us use social media to communicate with our family, friends and our loved once. Since almost all of my friends live 8000 mile away, I use Facebook, Instagram, and viber to keep in touch with them. Bur recently I started noticing it has become more than a means of communication. I start posting a picture and obsesses about how many likes I get, checking other peoples Facebook just to see if they have more friends than me, believing every post without questioning if it’s a fact and funny enough I start sending friend request for people I don’t even know. Christine Rosen, a senior editor of the New Atlantis and resident fellow at the Ethics and Public policy Center in Wessington, D.C. on “In the Beginning Was the World”, she wrote how technology is affecting the society’s critical reading ability. Peggy Orenstein, an author and a contributing writer for the New York Times, on “I Tweet, Therefore I Am” she talks about how social media is distracting as from fully live in the moment. Even though the development of technology have increased the quality of life, it also brought undeniable challenges to our society. The constant use of social media and internet has increase society attention-seeking, Distracted, and decries critical reading. The use of social media has increased dramatically throughout the years.