How Do Digital Media Affect Reasoning on Important Social Issues - Essay Example

Lecturer: How do digital media affect reasoning on important social issues? Digital media as a venue for reasoning has remained a continuous debating issue as to whether it benefits the society to improve their reasoning capacity or it impacts them. Digital media has increasing become widely used in all sectors across the globe. It has become a medium for making communication effective, learning and other varied activities. Digital media takes varied form including the Internet, magazines, television, mobile phones, radios, newspapers and social networking sites. All these are forms of social media that have contributed to varied changes on the way organizations and people communicate or exchange information. Many scholars have come up with their ideas about the effect that media contributes to the society. Other has come up with logical fallacies while others have tried to balance the rhetorical issue of the effect of media to social issues. Some of them argue that digital media in the age of technology have impacted teens; thus making them more stupid than smarter (Carr 341). This is because digital media alters the way many people think, write, read and communicate. Although media provides valuable information and makes communication easier; too much dependent on digital media affects the health of individuals, privacy issues and contributes to cultural biasness. Digital media are effective because it makes communication easier and cheaper, but too much reliance on digital media has affected social issues. This is because media nowadays have altered the brain of many people; thus, they no longer reason the way they used to reason. The ways people read, write or communicate nowadays have significantly changed. Carr (340) reveals that technology has made many people stupid, and it has altered the way their brains functions. For instance, students have developed different language of communicating and even writing styles have totally changed. This has impacted social issues because the brain of many teenagers has now adapted to the new ways of reading, writing and communication styles. The shortening styles of texts affect the academic performance of students because most of them become used with such text; thus contributes to poor performance because of grammatical errors. Digital media has affected the reasoning on significant social issues; thus contributing to increased violence and unethical behaviors. Many teenagers spend most of their time in social media such as televisions or play video games on computers. This has contributed to increased violence because some video games are dangerous to teenagers; thus, they contribute to violence behaviors in the society. Other develops unethical behaviors especially bad sexual behaviors due to watching pornography or love movies. Other unethical behaviors may include smoking, and use of drugs because teens want to gain adequate energy to continue surfing or chatting with their friends. Digital media has contributed to increased health issues such as stress and poor health relationships. Poor health relationship in this case results due to relationship made through social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and many others, which leads to stress and loneliness. Stress may result in case one partner may break up with their partners, and this can sometimes lead to committing suicide (Winget and William 83). Many teenagers are among the groups that fall in poor relationships that affect them emotionally. Young generations spend most of their times login into social networking sites and creating profiles and publicly articulate their relationships with others. Other teenagers write extensive comments on their profiles some of which contributes to social conflicts and others are demoralizing. Moreover, some teenagers spend most of their entire time on social networking sites and cellphones to interact with their friends. This has led to increased social disorders and contributed to health issues such as obesity among others. Obesity is one of the diseases that have become common among teenagers. This is because they spend most of their time on social networking sites than doing core activities or exercises. Others use cellphones to hyper text; hence, many of them have developed health complications. Some teenagers have ended up becoming drug addicts because they use drugs such as marijuana and cocaine. This will make them hyper so that they can spend a lot of time to hyper texting with their friends. It may lead to loss of privacy issues especially some digital such as televisions, radios and even some magazines try to provide information of a certain celebrity. Many teenagers are interested in watching films or music and invite other peers to join the sites for these musicians. Many of them may begin to participate due to social and opportunity to craft personal representation in the popular community of celebrities. Many teenagers love to envisage the social globe through using their profiles. They also adopt certain strategies, and many of them prefer to connect with celebrities who they adore. For instance, Twitter, MySpace and Face book have become among the prominent social networking site for many high school students or teenagers across the globe. Therefore, these sites tend to follow cultural and linguistic aspects that have contributed to varied social issues in the contemporary society. Some digital media such as televisions ads magazine and movies may contribute to cultural biasness. The issues of cultural resonance have been impacted because of the prejudice created upon watching such social media. Cultural biasness arises when the viewer creates cultural prejudice when watching movies such as Hollywood or African movies. This is because everyone interprets his or her own ideas or they may create a negative picture in mind about a certain culture. These media can also create an implication on identity of a particular society. While the engagement in these social media sites may connect people through social networking sites and promote a global village, it may contribute to loss of culture (Ghorbani and Rosemarie 367). This is because the social media enables people to interact through sharing a common language, which is English; thus contributing to cultural erosion. Moreover, social media such as add magazines or advertisement posted on social sites or television contribute to gender issues. In most cases, some advertisement contributes to gender issues in that many advertisers may post the picture of female when making an attempt of promoting certain products such as cosmetics. Some of these pictures are sex, and most of them contributes to genders issues especially loss of self-esteem to femininity. The advertisers can also use skewed beauty images that are posted on the social media sites with an aim of promoting their business. However, the skewed ad may send a negative image to the viewers and some of them may interpret the image in a negative way. For instance, the skewed beauty pictures of women may send a message of gender issues by viewing women as sex objects. Social media such as Twitter and Facebook has changed the way people interact in the society. It has led to loss of the traditional method of communicating such as face-to-face method; thus impacting the way people socializes or interacts with their friends (Ghorbani and Rosemarie 363). For instance, many people can express themselves when they are chatting with their friends, but when they met, the fail to express themselves in front of their friends. Lack of face-to-face interactions may contribute to communications barrier because some people may be able to understand effectively when on use facial expression. Furthermore, one may be able to determine of interpret the feeling of the other partners when they are communicating face to face. Therefore, these social media sites lead to loss of effective communication because many of people lack effective communication speech. Although, digital media have contributed to varied social issues, it has contributed to varied social aspects in transforming the society. First, it has made communication easier and cheaper because many people can nowadays communicate with other in far distance through simple texts and sending e-mails. It has also improved learning and enabled students to carry out their research work effectively. This is through the use of e-books and Internet; thus enabling them to find information faster than search in books, in the libraries. Social media such as online magazines, Internet such as news and blogs have contributed to a national disaster relief. For instance, people use their cellphones to send their donations to where disasters have taken place. Lastly, social media such as social networking sites have united many people across the globe; thus contributing to a global village. In conclusion, even though media provides valuable information and makes communication easier; too much dependent on digital media affects the health of individuals, privacy issues and contributes to cultural biasness. Digital media has led to varied social issues including increased violence, unethical behaviors, health complications, cultural biasness and privacy of celebrities. Many of the teenagers no longer reason the way they used to before the introduction of technology; thus contributing to poor performance in schools. Although, digital media have contributed to varied social issues, it has contributed to varied social aspects in transforming the society. It has made communicate easier, contributed to a national disaster relief, improved learning activities, and it has linked many people across the globe; thus contributing to a global village. Work Cited Carr, N. Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2009):340-347. Print. Ghorbani, Nahid, and Rosemarie Heidari. "Effects of Information and Communication Technology on Youth's Health Knowledge." Asia-pacific Journal of Public Health. 23.3 (2011): 363-368. Print. Winget, Megan A, and William Aspray. Digital Media: Technological and Social Challenges of the Interactive World. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2011. Print. Read More