Category: Integrating Ideas

After listening to the various podcasts about social media, technology and data collection I have to say I’m a bit concerned. The situation described in china is very reminiscent of the book 1984, a dystopian about what our lives would be like under an oppressive communist leader. In the novel, citizens are surveyed constantly throughout the day and they are even assigned a social status which is exactly what china does with their social “credit score”. Overall listening to these podcasts really got me thinking about my online privacy and how much of what I do is tracked and used to target ads at me. The example that the TED talk gave about a pregnant 15 year old girl being discovered as pregnant by target before her parents based on her shopping habits really surprised me. I had no idea that these companies had the power to do this, I know in my life there have been times where I felt I was being surveyed and recommended things to buy based off of my interests or frequented online sites but never to the degree that this girl faced. Internet users need to be more aware of how their data is being used and learn ways of controlling it because our data should be our own.

{Topic}The topic of the use of cell phones and the negative effects they are having on today’s teens has come up a lot lately. {Restriction} Specifically, how the use of them has made teenagers less social than ever before. {Evidence} In Jean Twenge’s Atlantic article “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” she talks to many teenagers on their views and experiences and is told by one teen that “she’d spent most of the summer hanging out alone in her room with her phone.” {Analysis} Most teens today are content to just sit in their rooms and use their phone since all the interaction they could ever want is done with their phone. In past generations, this was not possible so physical real life interactions were the only way to socialize with friends, building positive social skills.

After listening to Sherry’s ted talk about social media technology I believe that her main point is that social media changes who we are as people. Sherry has interviewed hundreds of people and the evidence shows that our devices have so much psychological influence on us that they effect what we do and what we act like. She mentions how things that would have seemed odd even a few years ago are now normal and accepted like texting during corporate board meetings, students text and go on facebook during classes, and having trouble making eye contact. Clearly the evidence shows that social media and the all powerful cell phone are changing who we are as people and mainly for the worst.

If I had to think back to a time I was a surface learner it would have to be when I took AP calculus in my senior year of high school. Like most other classes in high school, I really only looked aimed for the grades and not so much learning and understanding the content I was being fed day in and day out. But in no other class was it more clear to me that I was only learning at the surface level. I took notes, passed the tests, quizzes and homework and ultimately passed the course. As Bain puts it “Surface learners usually focus only on passing the exam, not on ever using anything they read”. And that’s exactly what I did, I did not pass the AP exam, an exam that really required a deep understanding of the material. I achieved the bare minimum and as a consequence I have to take calculus again this year. The second time around I do not plan on making the same mistakes.