The Ugly Truths Behind Technology

By Kaylei Fear

To truly understand technology's potential and looming approach, we must come to terms with our entanglement with our devices. As college students, we are on our laptops and cellphones constantly. Whether it is for homework, talking to friends or mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, life for many would come to a screeching halt without our trusty sidekicks.

Documentaries like “The Social Dilemma” and others bring attention to the benefits and pitfalls of technology being all-consuming. These documentaries uncover society’s ugly truths and our faults with technology, but are we willing to face them head-on?

Dr. Susan Stewart, sociology professor at Iowa State University, focuses on our intimate relationships within our human lives. A massive disrupter to our intricate relationships is the technology itself and, more so, social media. While social media allows us to be connected to those far away, it keeps us miles and miles apart from those sitting right next to us.

“It’s a whole new world. It’s different from the automobile. It’s different from the telephone, and I guess that’s what is the downside. These social platforms have been created to keep us addicted and on there as long as possible and it’s hurting intimacy. It’s hurting friendships, romantic relationships or even just between colleagues. You no longer get the full three-dimensional experience,” said Stewart.

This lack of intimacy and newfound infatuation with social media and technology is harming us. Evolutionarily, we as humans were meant to interact and depend on each other. Technology and social media were never a part of that evolutionary code. These documentaries call attention to how technology has changed our lives permanently.

“Technology has fundamentally changed relationships forever. You can’t put the genie back into the bottle, right? There are really positive things but also really negative things, and it’s now how we teach children about what they are participating in and how to regulate that,” said Stewart. There is no going back, only trudging forward, focusing on eradicating technology’s negatives and embracing the positives.

Documentaries like “The Social Dilemma” being accessible to the general public through platforms such as Netflix allow us to learn about important issues that, before technology, weren’t possible. A world of knowledge is quite literally at our fingertips, but we need to be the ones to take the extra step to hit play. Vanessa Chally, a sophomore in pre-business conveys that watching these documentaries opened her eyes to topics she would never have been aware of otherwise.

“After watching ‘The Social Dilemma,’ I realized I needed to take a step back and think about how dependent I am on my phone. School tells you, you’re addicted to your phone, but they don’t tell you anything to actually convince you to give your phone a break,” said Chally.

After a long year, reliant on technology and social media to keep us connected with our friends and the world, right now is the best time to consider your relationship with technology. Our real connections with people we see with our own two eyes are the most important. Technology can always be turned back on or refreshed, but people and life itself during our short time on Earth cannot be paused. Remember that.