Notes

How Technology Affects Our Youth
Recently I was invited to speak at our local high school within their "Great American Teach-in," an application held within Florida whereby guests are asked to talk with the students on a variety of subjects. Among my business related articles caught the attention of a local teacher and I was subsequently asked by the Business/IT Department to come in to make some remarks regarding business and technology. My talk was entitled "Our Changing Times" which discussed how technology affects us as human-beings. It was my argument that technology has an adverse influence on our mental acuity and productivity in this country. I conducted two consecutive classes of around 50 senior high school juniors each. Both sessions were interesting.

I began with an extremely brief description of my company and our methodologies for system design, data base design, enterprise engineering, and project management. Basically, I wanted to determine myself as a credible businessman who had extensive experience available and IT world. Then i reviewed the cultural and technical changes I witnessed over the last 40 years. I even brought in some old mainframe magnetic tapes, printer wheels, and plastic templates useful for flowcharting.

I then discussed how technology affects us as humans. It really is my contention that technology has conditioned us to be intolerant of inefficiencies and limitations thereby causing us to believe faster, virtually, and to multitask. Consider it; we don't like to wait in traffic, we wish information at our fingertips, we be prepared to be able to listen to any song or watch any movie whenever we're in the mood, you want to get in and out of hospitals, we wish instant food, instant pictures, instant credit, instant money, instant everything. We drive faster and talk faster because we've been conditioned to take action.

To illustrate the point, I quoted some references; first, Dr. Mack R. Hicks, author of "The Digital Pandemic," who demonstrated how technology alters the minds of impressionable youth. So much so, linked with emotions . exhibit exactly the same robotic mannerisms of the technology they use which is not conducive for grooming socialization skills. Hicks basically argued that technology is really a genuine threat to the human spirit.

I next referenced the work of Dr. Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at King's College London University, who in 2005 was hired by Hewlett Packard to analyze the effect of technology at work. During his study he discovered that workers distracted by phone calls, e-mails and texts suffer a greater loss of IQ than if they'd smoked marijuana. The IQ of these juggling messages and work fell by typically 10 points - equal to missing a whole night's sleep and more than double the four-point fall seen after smoking pot. The drop in IQ was even more significant in men.

These studies surprised the students. To stress the point further, I asked the students how they received their news. Out of 100 students, only 4 read a newspaper, a couple of got it from an app on the iPhone and virtually none watched the evening news. Interestingly, a handful said they got their news from Jon Stewart on "Comedy Central." Needless to say, I found it rather disturbing that students were out of touch with the world's ever-changing events and considered Jon Stewart a credible source for unbiased journalism. W here as adults are generally upset with politicians, the economy, jobs, military conflicts, etc., our teenagers are rather apathetic. I don't believe parents even speak to them around the dining room table, which I found rather disturbing. Fortunately, this specific group of students will not be old enough to vote in the 2012 election; but should they did, I'm confident they could be easily swayed.

As students in the late 1960's we obviously didn't have all the elegant technology as is available today, but most of us knew what was going on in the world. Everyone browse the daily newspaper and weekly news magazines, watched nightly news, listened to radio, and discussed it over lunch or with their parents. We all knew concerning the War (Viet Nam), the protests, major accidents and catastrophes, elections, the many assassinations, etc. If you didn't stick to top of recent events, you were considered a dullard. Not so today. In fact, I got the uneasy feeling that you are an oddity in the event that you follow the news headlines today.

Wanting to understand their reliance on technology, I asked the High Schoolers if they could live without their smart phones. All except one said they believed they could manage. The one exception wouldn't budge, even when I pushed her to defend her position. In her mind, the phone was her lifeline to her friends and social life. Without it, she was lost.

In the summary section of my presentation I admonished the students to build up a sense of history, not only American history, but history pertaining to their chosen career path. I told them this is needed so that they wouldn't commit exactly the same mistakes we made and understand why we made sure decisions through the years. I challenged them to resist the temptation to go on "automatic," to avoid repetition; avoid stagnation; to question the status quo, and simply THINK (an old IBM expression).

I don't know how successful I was at getting my points across. Some students looked as apathetic as plenty of adult programmers I've taught over the years. The teachers appeared to appreciate my presentation and explained so. I also had several students thank me for the presentation afterward, shook my hand, and asked a few pre-determined questions. I don't think I batted 1.000 with the kids that day, but easily got them to at the very least start considering things, i quickly believe I made a hit.

Keep the Faith!

Tim Bryce is a writer and management consultant situated in Palm Harbor, Florida.
http://www.phmainstreet.com/timbryce.htm

He can be contacted at: [email protected]

Copyright � 2011 Tim Bryce. All rights reserved.
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