Technology & Its Negative Impact
This week in my journalism class, we focused on the negative impacts of the internet. I found this to be my favorite topic so far, as I have always taken a special interest in analyzing technology and social media’s effects on society. It was very satisfying to finally have a name to put to these phenomena I had picked up on.
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One of the topics that stuck most with me was called “spill-over”. A very loose definition of this is the phenomenon of different aspects of your life ‘spilling over’ or blending into others, due to technology. For example, this happens when uses computers for school, then later use the same computer at work, and later at home. This is carrying all of the information from each aspect of one’s outside life and bringing it all home with them. With all of this information now being accessible from outside of the classroom or office, it encourages people’s bosses or professors to expect their students and employees to do more work at home during their downtime. As a student who is also working for the University of Illinois, I feel this effect every day. It impacts me to the point that when I have downtime, I work on school or work, and bring those associated emotions my work brings me into my home life. This “spill over” ends up impacting me, my free time, my emotions, and the people I come home to at the end of every day.
After learning about all of technology’s negative effects and how it impacts my daily life, I will make sure to move forward and establish boundaries between different aspects of my life and what roles I allow technology to play in them. My main strategy comes from Berkowsky’s When You Just Cannot Get Away, when he mentions ‘boundary permeability’. Using his previously mentioned technique, I can learn to adjust the control technology has over me in different settings. This will allow me to be more cognizant of how susceptible I am to technology and its societal influences. Although this is something I have grown up with and will always continue to face as technology evolves, monitoring my relationship with technology, old or new, will help me make sure I maintain a healthy relationship with things beyond my control.
