Is Digital Media Bad For Us?

Is digital media bad for us? A question with many answers. Specifically five answers.

Social-political worries:
In my opinion, Wikileaks and its ilk are the best thing to happen to journalism in a long time. What I love about it is that it allows not only for private citizens to contribute to news which will be picked up by CNN and the like later, but it allows those same citizens to use their voices as means of keeping big news outlets in line; of watchdoging them for any bogus information they may put out. While I was living in Holland, a hated criminal died in jail while awaiting sentences. He died of “food poisoning,” shortly before he was to be tried. The news merely mentioned this, then moved right on to important stories about baby ducks hatching. I would be interested to see if there are any Wikileaks articles on issues such as this which are much more possible in countries where the government has more power and the press has less. Not a bad thing. Nope.

Socio-interpersonal worries:
While it is certainly preferable to communicate face to face with people, I would argue that social media and the like actually encourage this more than discourage it. When used properly, social media allows those who use it to organize and initiate real world social interaction. Interacting long distance is simply never going to be as enjoyable as being with someone, so unless someone is already socially deficient and using facebook as a means of walling themselves off even more from the real world, just about anyone will use social media as a means of facilitating real world contact since that’s what they really want and benefit from. The fear of the facebook addicted shut-in is, I think, a product of the same fear that is brilliantly exposed in the article about the “Pokemon Generation,” of which I am a proud member- for all of Pokemon’s flaws on a narrative level, it provides a lovely metaphor for the digital age in many ways, as noted by the article. The fear that when kids plug in to the internet for social purposes, this kills their drive to socialize normally is, as the article states, merely a product of “generation gap.”

Psychological-emotional worries:
I would have to agree with the article about IAD, especially the following idea as to why we need to have a “disorder,” for people checking their email constantly:
“It's the tendency of some mental health professionals and researchers to want to label everything they see as potentially harmful with a new diagnostic category.”
Setting aside theories about psychiatrist profiteering and other paranoid malarkey, I think it’s simple human nature: we like to categorize and label things so that we can devote as little thought as possible to them, not because we’re stupid, but because we want to think about other things, things that concern us more. Psychiatrists should beware diagnosing a nonexistent disease when they could be looking past the symptoms to the true emotional issues that lead to any addiction, or indeed any mental disorder.

Psychological-cognitive worries:
This is a concern I am familiar with, having heard my parents parrot it after reading it in magazine articles. The fact of the matter is, many of the most famous and lauded works on the internet contradict this notion: it requires quite a lot of attention span to watch a review of the Star Wars prequels (regardless of how entertaining it is) that is about as long as the prequel it reviews. While there is certainly a truth to the notion of the internet encouraging a new style of learning, i.e. Katamari style learning, picking up may little pieces as the knowledge ball rolls, I would argue that we take bigger pieces the more engaging we find a subject, so once again, it’s up to content producers, both of art and of education, to make their work more palatable and more interesting if they want us to pay attention. Furthermore, as the response to Nicholas Carr notes, information that is digested more quickly also evolves more quickly- a book may seem like a more reliable source of info than a Wikipedia article that can be edited by anyone, but if the author of a book prints something false, that falsehood has cost tons of money and paper, even more of which will be needed to correct it, not to mention that the knowledge sits on the shelves to misinform until this is corrected, and afterwards as well unless every earlier copy is destroyed. An internet article wastes no paper and usually no money, and can be edited instantly, allowing the knowledge there in to adapt for those who consume.

Behavioral-practical worries:
I would assume this to be assumed in the discussion of the faults with the internet obsession disorder theory, but as far as I can tell, this section exists mainly to add the caveat that we do need to keep track of our internet activities in terms of quantity and quality, as is elaborated on in Len Masterman’s piece. As implied, I think this goes without saying. I would only like to add that I think the internet actually makes this process easier rather than harder, because it allows for us to quickly asses whether something is worth our time or not and quickly move on to something else if it isn’t, allowing for more experimentation and discovery- rewarding that which truly speaks to more people- and lessening the power of arbitrary classifications as to what qualifies as a “classic,” or  “sensationalist garbage,” that tend to be imposed on young minds by traditional academia- as almost anyone who’s been forced to read “All The King’s Men,” can attest.