Technology And Its Catastrophic Social Effects

The world today simply cannot function without technology. From workplaces, to social events like marriages and functions, festivals etc., technology has created a space for itself.

If there is any message that is supposed to be conveyed, social media platforms are the best mediums to do it. It is good, in a way, where we are looking at new dimensions and functioning in accordance to the global society.

Mobile Phone users Don’t care for the things that are happening around.

Some of the expert sociologists have two theories, known as collective consciousness and collective intelligence.

Collective conscious or collective conscience can be defined as the set of shared ideas, beliefs and moral/ethical attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society in a global or local scale. Whereas, collective intelligence is the sum of all the intelligence, shared by the social group, in a macro or a micro level. Everything is a part of the collective brain, which has the whole society/state/country or the world, experiencing and thinking along the same lines.

When that happens, if the whole concept is progressive, it immediately takes a positive turn and is spread and absorbed by the whole society; whether it is global or local. The phenomenon has quite appropriately been named by twitter as “trending”.

Technology And Its Catastrophic Social Effects

Two out of every three people can be seen using gadgets of some kind, in public places.

Trends or the ‘in fashion’ concept is not just about the physical aspects but the psychological and the social aspects as well.

And with the ever dynamic electronic and technological upgrades, these changes are becoming rapid.

In the 19th and 20th Century, it used to take five to six years for a trend to spread, but now it merely takes a couple of weeks.

“Twerking” by Miley Cyrus in her live concert had created a trend, where everyone started to follow the rage, on and off social media.

An interesting fact: The concept of “Selfies” took merely 5-6 weeks to spread in the entire world, whereas it took more than 20 years, before people started wearing Denim Jeans!

There have been many instances, where just one event has been enough to make it a global trend.

Recently, there was a video on YouTube which went viral. It was about a woman repeating the words, “Sitting on the toilet” in the entire video. The video ends with just one more phrase in the end, which is, “and Flush”

Now what happened in this video, was the execution of this theory.

Once you would read the description, you will see that it has around 83,148,530 views, you would be curious about it and watch it.

Technology And Its Catastrophic Social Effects

Virtual has a hypnotic element which creates an effect, where people don’t notice things happening around. Source

You would also share it, as everyone else was doing it too.

Well, let’s admit, the video was useless, but still, people were watching and sharing it online. This is called “ape culture”, where someone imitates the others, just because they were doing it.

This can go either way and has affected many social facets; for instance, people (kids and adults alike) do not pay attention to the things that happen in the real world, and spend most of their time on social networking sites. Family dinners, dates, birthday parties or any other occasions, even in funerals and condolence services, the virtual social interaction and the status updates have prevailed for all phases of life. This is where one should draw the line and understand the value of real feelings and emotions.

People are so engrossed in their virtual lives that they don’t talk, interact, socialize or become a part of activities, all because of the every changing and innovative technology.

Picture Credits : Anurag Vats, OneWorldNews

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