The readings overall are about the growth of personal technology and its evolved effects on the users. The reading more directly discusses filling the void of traditional social cues in online communication. I find the Mckenna study from Baym chapter 6 to be the most interesting in the study over 50 percent of people had made a personal connection offline though face to face or other tools of communication. This denounces that people are straying away form F2F relations or older form of communication. I also find from a couple of the readings that so many people are engaged in digital media that they need to power down. I remember when i was kid they use to promote turing off the tube and now they are suggesting powering off. In the radio program it was reported the an an average kid spent 7 hours a day engaged in CMC. That seems like crazy amount compared to when i was a kid. It shows how from kid to adults, everyone is engaged in CMC.
6 thoughts on “Personal Technology”
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Kids are spending so much time on CMC, but they are mostly socializing with other people. I find that very interesting because at least they are having human interactions of some sort. It is crazy that they spend so much time looking down at a screen, and it gets annoying when you try to talk to someone who is not paying you much attention because they are having a side conversation on their phones. It takes great multitasking skills!
Yes, I can’t stand when you talk to someone who is responding but also texting or looking at their phone. I don’t see it in older people as much as I do in younger people. Does this mean it’s incumbent on the Gen X’ers and Baby Boomers to teach the millenials basic values and old school traditions that may be in jeopardy? I think that’s what we read about in the Sawchuck and Crow article with the G-Moms.
As a mother, I too, think that spending an average of 7 hours on CMC are not only crazy, but also rediculous. I would never allow my kids to stay that long on CMC not because I am antitechnology or anything but because this is not healthy. Kids should go out, do activities, and breath fresh air instead of sitting at home staring at TV or PC or any CMC.
As you stated in your blog, face-to-face communications are being replaced with blogs and texts. Although it allows for us to communicate with people further away, blogs and texts lack the personal meanings that come with in-the flesh relations. This worldwide engagement in CMC can result in a gradual decrease of interpersonal skills and polite mannerisms. Since some of these “far-off folks” will most likely never see each other in the flesh, they have no real reason to be polite to each other or other individuals. Occurances such as this could result in a society that focuses more on vengence than on friendship, which would almost certainly prove disastrous.
I remember when I was younger, I was constantly texting. This was before smartphones and interactive social media. So, I had to create conversations to entertain myself. I know they were mostly without purpose, just talking for the sake of it. The only times I had a goal in mind was if I was trying to coordinate an activity among friends. As I was maintaining those social ties, I felt strangely more connected to that wider net of friends, however futile. Today, I am much closer with a smaller group of people, but we have more substantial conversations, often in person. I also spend a lot more time now, segmented across various media platforms. I rarely watch TV, but a good chunk of my time goes into CMC activities.
Kids are definitely becoming more and more isolated from the real world with technology. Most schools even prefer for students to have things like Ipads and laptops in order to stay up to date with technology. When I was a kid, there was no such thing as an Ipad or bringing cell phones to school. Now kids are encouraged to stay up to date with CMC. This worries me and scares me for our kids future.