People immediately accept terms and conditions, sign up for multiple online accounts, and enter sensitive data into untrustworthy sites. These are just a few risky actions that people have become accustomed to. People are providing massive corporations with data that they can use to maximize their customer interaction and profits. I find it interesting that to corporate America, people’s information is goods to be purchased or sold. People have been warned about this idea but have become desensitized to it due to the comfort and distraction they provide. What concerns me the most is that people continue to use the platforms regardless of the associated risks, whether through hours of daily use of social media sites such as TikTok or Youtube or targeted advertising when online shopping. Knowing about the potential decrease in attention span and self-confidence, dependency on technology, and privacy threats still do not deter society from changing its actions.
With technology’s tightening chokehold on society, people must be aware of the impending dangers of not being technologically literate. Not being able to effectively and efficiently use technology can cause an individual to be behind the curve to potential employers and cause the individual to himself at risk of not understanding advancements and being isolated from the new technological world. More than just making me a stronger candidate for employers, I understand that technology is the main route to communicating with the rest of the world and assessing information. With the technical skills and knowledge I acquire in this class, I aim to improve my communication skills online and better research methods. Also, learning about HTML is exciting since I am interested in coding.
My primary goal is to inform myself of potential remedies to the adverse side effects of excessive social media use. I used social media platforms such as TikTok and Youtube for hours a day, with no regard for what I was doing to my mental health and motivation. I thought it was honest fun, but soon the hours would fly by, and I would sometimes catch myself just scrolling unconsciously. I also noticed my diminishing attention span and the habit of falling back on social media when stressed. For the sake of my attention span and mental health, I deleted TikTok over a year ago and just deleted YouTube a couple of months ago. I want to learn about methods for rectifying the adverse effects and how to have a healthy relationship with social media platforms. Additionally, I hope to learn about the consequences of technology that I have yet to learn about and methods to combat them.
