How Technology is Altering Human Behavior

Mobile phones

Let’s start with mobile phones, as they made our lives easier while also becoming indispensable parts of it. It’s interesting to see how the vast majority of people, particularly those who were born in the cellphone era, probably couldn’t even meet up without relying on a mobile phone. How would they know where the other one is? How would they know if the other person is late, if they had an accident of some sort or if they would show up at all? Should they go back home or wait a few minutes? As you can see, all sorts of uncomfortable situations could happen without a device we take for granted today.

Social media and cameras

We were all educated not to talk to strangers and this lesson carries even more weight for millennials. However, social media turned this rule upside down. Everyone talks to everybodydue to the fact that there is a screen between them, which honestly gives no more than a vague feeling of security. Our kids spend most of their time online, not to mention they have profiles and virtual trails on all kinds of social networks. Their relative familiarity with the online world arms them with enough confidence to reevaluate the dangers of talking to strangers, which we know is utterly wrong. Going back to the topic of smartphones – which also allow easy social media access – some of their apps can indirectly lead to potentially harmful situations. How many times have you shared an Uber ride or rented a part of your house on Airbnb to complete strangers? Also, every stranger ringing our doorbell was considered a possible threat before. Now we have them visiting our homes thanks to second hand online stores that allow you to sell and buy pretty much everything, even the house itself.

No more reading

Another technology-altered behavior we can bring up is our increasingly short attention span. Although physical newspapers are still present, many of them decided to turn digital, offering all the news on their websites for faster and easy access. This is topped by the fact that to catch up on the news, most people use their smartphone, which has a smaller screen. People don’t read longer news stories anymore, they just scan them, swiping for keywords, and turning away from any article that looks complex. Furthermore, character limits are also degrading our reading ability: thanks to Twitter, the average attention span is set to 140 characters, and any information above that is simply ignored. The pleasure of reading a book is in danger; despite that many devices support e-books.

Most internet users also don’t realize that their internet is becoming increasingly less free, as it’s an ever expanding medium. We should all become more conscious about the impact of digital on our lives, and all of us should be doing more efforts to protect this digital lifewe’ve become so fond of.