Is New Technology Making Us Inattentive?

Giotta surveyed students, "many of whom express anxiety about their evolving relationship with-and growing reliance on-new technologies such as Smartphones, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter." (Giotta, 2018) There appears to be a cultural shift in the amount of noise we are surrounded by.  We are constantly immersed in what is happening online.  Larry Rosen a professor at the University of California State agrees.  "He believes that technology has forced us to pay less attention to our real world communication and more to online communication." (Penn State University)

With new technology we can benefit from greater-arguably endless-access to culture but this might be causing us more harm, "with this sense of cultural enrichment and depth comes a feeling of information overload and the need to filter out the noise." (Kutchinsky, 2014) We feel the need to respond to people immediately, and expect the same in return. With those immediate responses comes not truly thinking about the response in the first place.  We need to take a break, breathe, and live in the "actual" moment.

References

@chairulfajar_ Unsplash image. Retrieved from https://unsplash.com/photos/wR5u40w3GMw

Giotta, G. (2018). Teaching technological determinism and social construction of technology using everyday objects. Communication Teacher, 32(3), 136–140. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1080/17404622.2017.1372589

Harli, M. Unsplash image. Retrieved from https://unsplash.com/photos/n7a2OJDSZns

Kutchinsky, S. (2014). Has Technology Changes our Cultural Taste? The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/2014/oct/31/-sp-technology-cultural-taste-youtube-vloggers-vice

Penn State University. (2015). Science in our World: Certainty and Controversy. Penn State University. Retrieved from

https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/2015/09/16/is-technology-really-making-us-less-social/