The aim of this essay is to present you with research findings on the effect of technology on children as far as their way of thinking and behaving are concerned. Each era is characterized by specific traits one of which is to be proven as the most dominating of all giving the main beating characteristic of each historical period. Nowadays era is the one characterized as the most rapid, technologically advanced period of time in humans’ history. The effects of technological and scientific progress are numerous and as expected they affect all fields of life. But young people are the ones who almost always seem to be more affected since they are less defensive compared to adults towards any kind of innovation. Aristotle, the great Ancient Greek philosopher and teacher of Alexander the great had written in his first book in his work Rhetoric that ‘young people are more enthusiastic to anything new and thus more easily victimized since they hold less reservation and prohibitions compared to the older ones who have learned to be a bit more skeptical. The Youngers get enthusiastic with everything and then get bored very quickly and start looking for new sources of enthusiasm’. If Aristotle is to be considered as one of the best writers who have managed to draw the exact profile and mysteries of human nature and life’s principles, then it can be argued that teenagers indeed seem to be the first group who get affected by technology in their thoughts and behavior compared to other age groups. This essay will present you with the research findings on how they are affected and to what extent as well as with the reflections drawn upon these results.
Looking into the main aspects affected by technology in the fields of thought and behavior, one could divide them into the following sub-fields of thought and behavior: communication, literacy, social behavior, enjoyment and hobbies, personality skills and life philosophy.
Communication is experienced under totally new perspectives on behalf of teenagers. The traditional ways of face-to-face communication or calling each other have been replaced by technological ways of communicating. Texting is the new way of communication. Children who are at the beginning of their lives and they are supposed to put the foundation for their lives’ communication channels and contacts need to be informed on the benefits of interactive communication and be provided with chances which can give them the ability to enjoy real human contact. At the same time they are to be informed on any innovation and new technological appliance since this will familiarize them with anything new and will prevent them from making a myth for anything new and be attracted to it like being blind folded. Porath (2011) reports ‘Look around on any bus, in any restaurant, or standing in any line and people are text messaging. Likewise, most teenagers in America are nearly inseparable from their cell phones, not because they are constantly talking, but because they are connecting with their friends through text messaging. Although cell phones are banned in most K-12 schools, students are text messaging constantly there as well. Few adults, including teachers and administrators, understand how and why adolescents and young adults are using text messaging or how to harness text messaging capabilities in the classroom.’
Texting is also reported on being the basic reason why children seem to lose interest in their language studies. Texting has resulted in children using a special code of language, the textual language which has its own codes, not words. This is not a simple matter since it is of great psychological and social impact. Teenagers start imposing on their own their restrictions according to the code they use on their language skills. It is as if they let themselves be imprisoned in the jail they make for their own. They create their own system of writing and everyone needs to compromise to it. This is great pressure because automatically every teenager loses gradually his/her personality traits and potential liking to using language in a literal way so that he / she ends up being deprived of exploring the benefits of language studying.
In addition this technological impact results in teenagers being isolated and resulting in using as less face contact as possible. Teenagers seem to have found shelter behind a non- personal way of communication which does not demand them to keep an eye contact or be totally devoted to their discussion with the ones they are communicating. Besides texting functions in a double way. Not only does it prevent people from really communicating with the ones they are texting to, but it also prevents other kinds and situations of communication. Those who seem devoted to texting spend most of their time when interacting with others on their mobile screens rather than trying to meet them face to face. Teenagers seem to use texting as a way of hiding their real feelings or hiding from themselves since interaction is performed virtually and so there is no need to be totally sincere. They can say whatever is to be said to their best interest without necessarily really meaning it. It appears that texting has created a way of communicating in a way which does not allow sincere relationships.
Apart from texting and its implications, another aspect of technology which has been affecting teenagers is their mentality and behavior in everyday life. Technological advances and rapidness which characterizes every field of life has turned into turning people to rapid runners. Teenagers enter this highly antagonistic era within which almost everything can be achieved at the push of a button and they feel really puzzled. What is their life supposed to be? A constant race in which they have to participate either they want or not and make sure that they have high performances? Is everything supposed to be performed quickly at a great ease? Both these traits of technology are not easy to be handled. Rapidness and the ability for almost everything, either a plastic surgery or the transition of a piece of information or reaching a destination to be done in no time cause enthusiasm to teenagers abut it also causes lots of stress. Teenagers learn to live in an era where they have no time to enjoy any kind of action or procedure. Everything is to be performed in no time so they suddenly find themselves in an environment where everything is performed in no time. Their first reaction may be enthusiastic but mainly their deep feeling is their feeling peculiar and at an unpleasant surprise. If they allow themselves to be cool then they will miss lots of actions, events and any other things. So they make themselves learn to live rapidly. They eat standing up in front of a screen, they get dressed quickly, they are always on the run so that they can feel they get grasp of life and that they do not stay behind. The second aspect of this situation is their knowledge of power existing in their hands. The push of a button can do almost everything. And this feeling of power is not so good since they are too young to treat such responsibility. The immediate result is that they feel too puzzled and afraid of all these abilities. Anonymity and power which are empowered by technological advances and appliances are too difficult to be handled without psychological cost.
Schuler (2004) depicts the main characteristics of technology’ effect on people’s mentality and behavior in the following words ‘While online, some people self-disclose or act out more frequently or intensely than they would in person. [ ]six factors that interact with each other in creating this online disinhibition effect: dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority. Personality variables also will influence the extent of this disinhibition. Rather than thinking of disinhibition as the revealing of an underlying "true self," we can conceptualize it as a shift to a constellation within self-structure, involving clusters of affect and cognition that differ from the in-person constellation.’ So, Schuler depicts the concept of one finding himself / herself in front of new elements concerning his/her personality and having to deal with this new cognition process. If this procedure is to be examined within the groups of teenagers, then it is indeed alarming since teenagers find themselves to be confronting new elements about their personality as revealed through their being engaged to all these new behaviors in the ‘cyber-technological’ environment within which they are to operate. This is alarming since teenagers are supposed due to their process of growing up to have been confronting great dilemmas and internal conflicts while trying to define their personalities and their basic personality traits. Teenage years are the years during which teenagers try to define themselves and the basic route in their lives. Therefore this painful and costly procedure worsens while being confronted with extra conflicts caused by their engaged in the virtual environment of technology advances. Gross (2004) has characterized Internet as ‘an identity playground’ which may of course not be of such a negative effect since playing and enjoying the procedure of defining one’s identity may not be such a painful experience after all.
Another significant aspect of how teenagers are affected by technology in their thinking is the field of violence. Teenagers seem to feel more threatened than before since online communication and all online ways of communication have empowered those who wish to react violently but under anonymity. So teenagers feel more intimidated and suspected of something bad happening to them since they feel that they move in an unknown environment within which no protection can be provided to them.
Last but not least thinking on and behavior towards knowledge is one of the most visible effects of technology. Knowledge is easily accessible and therefore this can be both of good and bad effect. It can be good because teenagers are provided with all appliances and ability to access knowledge so they feel that learning and studying is easier. This belief creates a more secure environment within which they can operate and learn and study without feeling too afraid or tired of all the workload they have to do. They have access to online education platforms, to online academic and library sources and all this accessibility makes learning easier. On the other hand teenagers are bombarded with loads of knowledge so most of the time they feel puzzled at what to use or how to take advantage of so much knowledge to their best interest. In addition there is the danger they may feel that they are not obliged to learn anything since they can find anything they want at any time. So learning as a procedure is deprived of its beauty and positive contribution to people. There have been lots of cases in which teenagers end up using the easy solution of copying whatever they need for their essays and projects in their learning procedure without spending time on reflecting what they can find and what they can learn.
Last but not least attention ought to be drawn to the way that addiction as a process may start affecting teenagers. Since teenagers learn to use technology and enjoy its appliances and merits they come in front of the danger of becoming addicted to it. Either they become or not, there is no doubt that due to their young age they are easier to be carried away in feeling dependent on all technological appliances and benefits. Therefore teenagers fall in the trap of becoming addicted to something which they are not in a position due to their age to deal with effectively. This kind of addiction may be the red flag which can eventually open paths to other kinds of addictions.
Conclusion
All the above mentioned effects of technology are mostly approached in this paper based on research findings which seem to have put emphasis on the negative effects of technology and the dangers underlying the technological advances. By no means could that suggest that the effect of technology on the way teenagers think and behave is exclusively of negative nature. But it certainly needs lots of attention and dialogue and research on behalf of all so that technological effect on teenagers can be controlled in such a way that the above mentioned dangers can be eliminated.
Works Cited
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Elisheva F. Gross Adolescent Internet use: What we expect, what teens report Applied Developmental Psychology 25 (2004) 633 – 649
Porath Suzanne Text Messaging and Teenagers A Review of the Literature , Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology (RCET) 86 Vol. 7, No. 2, Fall 2011
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