Post for Week of 9/8

Week 3, a little late again.
The week of the Frontline video.
As with most news media, Frontline was made just as much to entice as to inform. It was difficult not to get sucked into the journey through the extremes of digital overload. I definitely had an emotional response to the video and it took me a little while to figure out exactly what the emotion was. Without a lot of thought given to the information presented, obviously the first response I had was "ALL TECHNOLOGY IS EVIL! BURN THE COMPUTERS! (and little Korean children are precious)" but that's not really the way I feel. The host spent so much time on the negatives and extremes of technology that it was hard to have an accurate and truthful response right off the bat. Now that I've had some time to mull it over, I am feeling a lot less impassioned about digital overload. While I think there are a lot of negative consequences to technology overuse/abuse, these issues don't affect a majority of people. Most people don't stay up all night playing WoW. Most people aren't performing 7 different tasks at once all day long. Technology can be a problem for interpersonal relationships as well as safety in cases of texting and driving, etc., but I think that as a whole, computers and communication devices are good things. One thing I do think is that children should have limited access to digital media. When I was a kid, I didn't have TV or video games or a computer at home to entertain myself. I think it's important for children to learn to entertain themselves by interacting with other people or using their imaginations. I had a similar experience as Dr. Wilkes observing children in front of the TV. I was babysitting a 5 year old boy, and we were tired after running around outside so we watched a movie. If I tried to talk to him while the TV was on, he would ignore me completely or perhaps didn't notice I was talking to him at all. It really irked me and made me thankful that I didn't have a TV in the house. As for teenagers, it's hard enough to monitor, let alone control what digital media they have access to. Cell phones can definitely get out of hand (no pun) in my opinion, but I don't think access to technology affects older young-folks as badly as children. Adults should be willing to accept the consequences of their use of technology. My mom loves checking the weather on her phone when we go out to eat. It bothers me and bothers my step dad even more, but if she's willing to accept the resentment, there's nothing we can do.

Until next time,
Z