Has the massive explosion of technology in the last few

years had negative effects on the current generation and

will have even more destructive results on future
generations?

By: Keith Tyner

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Booming technology growth

Ottawa University
Abstract
This bibliographic essay will show how technology has changed people and the effects that it is
having on everyone. It will show just how dangerous technology is and the things that it can be
causing. Technology is a powerful thing that has life changing capabilities that can be good or
bad. Yes, technology is having a negative effect on people that companies know about. A normal
conversation between two people used to be a face to face conversation. Conversations now are
something that happens through an email, text, or a social media site. It is having a negative
effect on all generations young and old. Kids are becoming more aggressive and are becoming
bullies much sooner than normal.
General public would now rather just sit in there room on their phone or playing some
video game rather than hanging out with their friends. It seems that people have become lazy the
farther that technology seems to grow. Technology is also starting to take over the work place
and there seems to be nothing that anyone can do to stop it. The further that technology grows
the worse the problem will become, and the harder that it will be for future generations to find a
job to make ends meet. All that people seem to see is the good in technology and the good in it
growing faster, but what they do not see is the negative effects that it is having on the world and
how truly dangerous it has become.
Introduction

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Technology is everywhere. It is in the everyday life of any person. It is growing faster
and faster. There seems to be no end to the ever changing technology. With technology changing
so fast, how much does the average person know. Sure everyone knows how to use their
cellphone or computer, but do people really know how they work. Do people know the true
dangers of technology? Can they see how it is changing people, and do they really know how it
works?
Social Media
With social media being a big thing in the world today, there is not a person out there that
is not on at least one social media site, and as social media becomes more popular it becomes
easier for people to bully this way. This way of bullying is known as cyber bullying and it is
becoming increasingly more common. Cyber bullying is not just between the bully, the victim
and the innocent bystanders that happen to see it. Cyber bullying is between the bully, the victim
and all the other bullies or people that do not like that person.
Now this means that the victim will get picked on so much worse than they ever did
before. This was a really good article that these two very qualified women wrote about
cyberbullying. This is a really good source that was peer edited and had a very credible author
"Cyberbullying." (Megan, and Lori, 2014) is a small article that explains what a mother was able
to do to a little girl over social media. This mom was able to create a fake account on social
media and talk to this girl. The conversations between the mom and the kid were where the
mom would insult or degrade the little girl. The girl had finally decided that she had had enough
and decided to end her life.

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This is the power that people on social media can have over someone else. Social media
is also becoming a breeding ground for a lot of different types of things that are all equally as
dangerous. They allow people to create fake accounts and pretend to be anything that there
victim wants them to be without the victim knowing it. This allows those people to get their
victim to do anything that they want even if the victim might not have normally done that. Once
they can get their victim to do anything that they want them to do then they might try to meet
them in person. Now this is where these people that have fake accounts, which are called catfish
can become very dangerous. This is when they will try to kidnap and do what they really want to
do to their victim.
There is little that can be done to these catfish as long as they do not actually get their
hands on the victim. There are no laws to help try to prevent catfish from continuing to commit
these acts, but there are people out there that do want to make a law against it. In this Article the
author uses plenty of sources and it is full of information and he was very well versed in this
area. "Stranger Danger and the Online Social Network." (Guo, Richard 2014) explains how easy
it is for catfish to do these kind of things and that there needs to be laws out there that can help
prevent it from happening.
What will these laws be able to do, and how much will they be able to prevent from
happening? Laws can help to try to make things better, but they cannot prevent them from
happening. People will always be able to cyber bully and catfish as long as the internet and social
media are around, but there are some ways that people can try to help themselves and make it
less likely that they become a victim of any online crime. A very good source that was peer
edited and very insightful about some of the things in it "Exploring The Individual's Behavior On

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Self-Disclosure Online." (Shih, Dong-Her, 2012) shows that most people do not really touch
their privacy settings on any of the social media sites that they use. This is a very easy way to
lessen the chances that one might become a victim of any online crime. She works for a well
known company in the area and she had her paper peer reviewed.
The worst part of all of this is how easy it is to make a fake account. "Stranger Danger And
The Online Social Network." (Guo, Richard 2014). This shows just how easy it is to make a fake
account. All that someone has to do is come up with a fake name and birthday and then just fill
the rest in how they want to then all they have to do is find a picture online. Then once they have
done that, they have created the perfect fake account to do whatever they want to with. No one
will ever know that its a fake account or what might happen to them.
Antisocial
As social media becomes more prominent in our society, it allows people to become more
antisocial than they used to be. People think that the social media is just like a blanket to hide
under and like a mask that they can put on. This was a really good source that was very well
written and peer edited Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds--for
Better and Worse (Healy, Jane M) When people communicate with others through a text, email,
or any social media site they do not have to respond right away. They have all of the time that
they want and need to come up with a good response, but when people are talking face to face
they have to come up with their response right away.
With these online site now, people can communicate with thousands of people around the
world and get hundreds of opinions all at once. Instead of when they would do it face to face,

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they would only get a few opinions at a time. So people will go to social media to ask questions
and do stuff like that, but these people do not really know the person asking the question. All that
they know is the stuff that he or she posts on that site. So their answer will be based on how they
think and feel. Now if they asked that question to their friends, their friend would give him or her
the best answer because his or her friends would really know that person and how he or she
thinks and feel about different things.
Social media and the internet are affecting more than just teenagers and adults. They are
also affecting kids too "How Is Technology Affecting Our Society?" (Jade Valenzuela 2012) was
a well written source and was peer edited. It is not just the internet and social media that are
affecting people, it is also the games that people play. Kids that play violent video games are
more likely to become bullies than the kids that do not play violent video games. People need to
watch the things that they do in their free time or they will not know how to have a good face to
face discussion with people or how to look them in the eye.
It is basic human desire to want a face to face interaction, but the internet is taking that
away, and people are not realizing what is happening to them. People want to be near other
people, and they want to go to bed next to someone that they care about, but how are people
going to do that if they keep shutting people out so that they can be on the internet. People do not
want to go to sleep next to their computer or cellphone, because they cannot give a person the
attention that they want and need.
Understanding Technology

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People take a lot of things for granted today without really understanding what they do.
People do not really understand what the technology they hold in their hand or use every day is
capable of, and they only know the bare minimum about some of the things that they can do and
how it really works. "Chapter 7: Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding Public Knowledge about S&T." (National Science Board 2015). This is an excellent source, it
was a government study done by scientists. This shows how much people really do not know.
This shows that people have a lack of basic understanding of basic science things, and if
people cannot understand basic scientific things then how can they understand something as
complicated as a cellphone or a computer. They cannot, it is information to far beyond their
understanding of science. They might be able to say that they know that their phone is a touch
screen and that it works by their finger, but what they could not tell you is how that touch screen
actually works and how the things on the screen pop up.
If people knew how these things worked then they could understand what that items full
potential is. If people knew what somethings full potential was then they would most likely be
able to fix a problem if and when that happened, but people take the simplest things for granted.
So when something does go wrong then they think that it is the end of the world. They will think
that it is broken and that they will need a new one.
Not only do people understand little to nothing about technology. It has also made people
lazy when it comes to reading online articles. "Does The Internet Make Us Stupid?." (Maurer,
Hermann 2011) This was a great source that was very well done and was peer edited. States how
people do not even fully read things online anymore. People will start to read it then get bored or
just stop caring and skim the rest of the article. When people start to skim articles, they will start

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to miss important information. So now they may think that they know what the article was about
when they missed all of the important information.
There are millions of people out there that do not understand technology, but there are a
few out there that do. "Intrusion Detection: Issues And Challenges In Evidence Acquisition."
(Broucek, Vlasti, and Paul Turner) this was a peer edited source that was written by people that
knew what they were talking about. There are people out there that do understand technology
very well. Some of these people become hackers and hackers understand computer codes, and
they know how to break it, so that they can do what they want to. Hackers can be very
dangerous, and hackers will always be around because no matter how far advanced technology
becomes, a great hacker will always be able to find a weak spot so that they can slip right on in.
Dangers of Technology
Technology is affecting people in lots of ways like it is making them less social, changing
how we communicate, and so many more, but one of perhaps the most dangerous is how it is
effecting our health. This article was peer reviewed and written by a group of professionals
"Biological Effects From Exposure To Electromagnetic Radiation Emitted By Cell Tower Base
Stations And Other Antenna Arrays." (Levitt, B. Blake, and Henry Lai) cellphone towers have a
dangerous effect on people. They can cause headaches, dizzy spells and cancer. Technology is
having some pretty serious negative effect on the human body.
Not only are cellphone towers bad for people but so are cellphones. When companies
manufacture cellphones, they have to make a little owners manual. In that owners manual there
is a part that says that when using it to call keep it at least an inch away from the head. The

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reason that this part is in there is because there have been some cases of cell phones causing
brain cancer. Cell Phones are not the only thing that is dangerous, there are a lot of other toys and
things that people use that all have warning labels or that will say dispose of properly. What does
that mean dispose of properly? It means that there are some dangerous chemicals and was
probably something that should not have been sold to the general public.
There is another growing danger of technology and that is the robotics take over.
"Promise And Peril -- The Deeply Intertwined Poles Of 21St Century Technology."( Ray,
Kurzweil 2014) this was a good source that was peer edited and written by very knowledgeable
person. Robots are much better at doing things than humans are and not only are they better, but
they are also more efficient and cheaper. They require no sleep and can work almost none stop,
with no mistakes. This presents a lot of problems for a lot of people because as technology keeps
growing then thats another step closer to the creation of a robot taking over that job. Once a
robot has taken over that job there is no way to get that job back. This will then be one less job in
the workplace, which means more people looking for other jobs.
It is becoming clearer that robotics is here and that they are already taking over so many
jobs. Robotics already have their place where humans work right next to them or when they
work by themselves. This is not going to be just a problem for the current workforce, but for all
future workforces as well. They will have to find a way to make a living with most jobs are
already taken over my robots.
Conclusion

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Technology may have many amazing capabilities, but there are also a lot of negative
effects that it has too. It may have the ability to let people communicate with each other around
the world, but what about the people that are in the same neighborhood or go to the same school.
People do not know a lot about technology. The only thing that people seem to know about it is
the things that they see about it during commercials. What people seem to not know is that one of
their friends on that social media site might not really be their friend, or that the phone that they
put next to their ear to make a call might be causing cancerous cells to grow in their brain. So in
conclusion, technology may seem really good on the surface, but once people start to dig a little
deeper they can finally see some of the bad things about it.

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Works Cited
Broucek, Vlasti, and Paul Turner. "Intrusion Detection: Issues And Challenges In Evidence
Acquisition." International Review Of Law, Computers & Technology 18.2 (2004): 149164. Computer Source. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
"Chapter 7: Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding - Public Knowledge
about S&T." Chapter 7: Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding Public Knowledge about S&T. National Science Board, May 2004. Web. 19 Mar. 2016.
<http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind04/c7/c7s2.htm#sb2>.
"Cyberbullying." Berkeley Technology Law Journal 24.1 (2009): 659-660. Computer Source.
Web. 19 Mar. 2016.
Guo, Richard M. "Stranger Danger And The Online Social Network." Berkeley Technology Law
Journal 23.1 (2008): 617-644. Computer Source. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
Healy, Jane M. Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds--for Better and
Worse. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998. Print

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Jade Valenzuela, Hannah Burran. "How Is Technology Affecting Our Society?" RJtoday.org.
RJtoday, 24 May 2014. Web. 19 Mar. 2016. http://rjtoday.org/2829/opinions/istechnology-affecting-our-society/
Kurzweil, Ray. "Promise And Peril -- The Deeply Intertwined Poles Of 21St Century
Technology." Communications Of The ACM 44.3 (2001): 88-91. Computer Source. Web.
20 Mar. 2016.
Levitt, B. Blake, and Henry Lai. "Biological Effects From Exposure To Electromagnetic
Radiation Emitted By Cell Tower Base Stations And Other Antenna Arrays."
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Maurer, Hermann. "Does The Internet Make Us Stupid?." Communications Of The ACM 58.1
(2015): 48-51. Computer Source. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
Shih, Dong-Her, et al. "Exploring The Individual's Behavior On Self-Disclosure Online."
International Journal Of Human-Computer Interaction 28.10 (2012): 627-645. Computer
Source. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.