The pros and cons of a digital society
Nowadays, people are living in the era of digital media. With the continuous development of technology, digital media is becoming more and more developed, and it is in every corner of life, it is inseparable from people. Especially during the epidemic, digital media cannot be separated from the lives of the general public, and people simply cannot imagine what life would be like without technology. During the Covid-19, both white-collar workers and students need to use digital media to continue their lives, for example, people will use zoom for meetings, studies and discussions. Also, businessmen can use the advantages of digital media to develop their businesses, and schools can use technology to develop the education of their students. Digital media has provided people with many conveniences, increased efficiency and solved many of the difficulties we face, but at the same time, it also has disadvantages.
Engagement
In real life, people are often limited in who and what they can engage with. Whether it is at school, at work or talking to friends, there is a limit to what can be shared. This limitation can limit people’s development and expression of their ideas. However, as online technology continues to develop, more and more people are engaging in these activities through digital technology. They can live a more convenient life through remote chats, meetings and classes. They can post the photos videos and ideas they want to post to the internet and let others see them as they want others to see them, thus creating a better image of themselves. They can also communicate with people from all over the world on various issues and better present themselves. Through social networking software, they can make different friends and observe the different lifestyles of everyone in the world, thus broadening their horizons. In the virtual world, they can find their true selves.
Fifty-five of UK shoppers will continue to primarily use online shopping centres after the pandemic.It’s not just chatting, digital technology is involved in every aspect of people’s lives. People use the Internet to shop, communicate, navigate and more, and it is more advanced than we can imagine. Online stores can generate data and analyze customer preferences based on the customer’s browsing history and push products that the customer may like to their home page, which can reasonably reduce the time the customer spends looking for products and to a certain extent promote economic development. Another very popular use is the use of Google Maps. Google Maps is so realistic that users can see directly what a neighborhood looks like when they open the map to find a geographic location, and look up geographic information about the world to help them locate, find and understand the location more easily.
Not only people are involved in the digital society, but also companies, markets, and other groups are involved. Internet marketing has become a new form of marketing in the digital society and has influenced the traditional consumer model to a certain extent. At the beginning of 2023, there will be 5.18 billion people using the Internet worldwide, which is equivalent to 64.4% of the world’s total population.It has become unstoppable as companies and businesses use this mode of operation to widely advertise their products and allow more people to shop on the Internet.
Some Drawbacks
The downside of the digital society cannot be ignored. As people rely on the Internet, their whereabouts, preferences and personal information may be monitored and become part of big data. Many people have experienced that after chatting with friends, mobile apps such as Instagram and Twitter push relevant information and products, raising concerns about whether their phones are being bugged and whether personal information (such as bank card numbers, home addresses, phone numbers, etc.) can be compromised when shopping online. At the same time, information is shared among the software to enhance the accuracy of ad pushing. In addition, user profiles are generated in the background based on users’ web browsing and shopping lists, etc. and updated into the application, which makes consumers suspicious of the secure management of online information. As a result, some people will use technology to steal important information, trade secrets and even assets of companies, leading to data leakage. In addition, the personal bank accounts of Internet users are at risk of being used by others for financial crimes and fraud. These phenomena raise ethical issues.
The downside of digital media also includes the issue of online ethics. In addition to the problem of hackers, we ourselves can also induce some bad behaviors. For example, some people choose to search for pirated movies in order not to pay to watch them on video software such as Netflix. Such behavior not only violates the business interests of others, but also involves people’s awareness of online moral thinking. Although we know that this practice is unethical, many people will still do it. In order to reduce the occurrence of these undesirable behaviors, we should continuously improve the Internet technology. Although the Internet provides people with the space to express their opinions freely, there are now a lot of personal attacks, false and pornographic information on the Internet, which not only seriously affect the Internet moral code, but also affect people’s physical and mental health. Therefore, it is also very important to manage one’s behavior on the Internet. Second, although technology has brought convenience to human beings, it also comes with dangers. Therefore, we should continue to develop digital technology while minimizing the risks it brings.
Reflection
I took this course because I knew nothing about digital technology and I didn’t know how to use it to develop my strengths and apply them to my field of study. When I first started taking the course, I thought it was just teaching us how to understand and use digital media in the traditional sense, but after I really studied it, I realized that there is more knowledge involved than I thought, and it also aroused my interest in exploring digital media and expanding my knowledge.
My major is economics, so I am very interested in economics, business and other related subjects. In this course, I can analyze how to use digital technology to develop my business from a business perspective. Just like in digisoc2, I was able to study how companies can use digital media to seize opportunities. While studying the usefulness of digital media, I was also able to learn a lot about business strategies and how to use the advantages of digital technology to innovate and challenge the challenges that will be faced by using digital technology.
I didn’t know how to write a blog and how to express critical thinking when I first wrote an article for this course. I even realized that the images we used had their own copyright after I submitted my article for the first time, and I also learned the importance of having a sense of copyright, whether in real life or on the Internet, it is very important to identify the source of information. This is also a way to respect and protect the copyright of the work and the owner of the copyright. In my subsequent writing studies, I continued to make adjustments to the essays I received based on the feedback I received on my writing. I would read the essays written by my classmates over the past few years, collect different people’s attitudes towards the topic, how they approached it, what angle they took, and to what extent, and then combine my perceptions to form my own system and to improve it.
Overall, this class refreshed my understanding of digital technology, and I no longer think of digital technology as just using cell phones to chat and video as shallowly as I did before, but also made me realize how digital technology is developing so rapidly and how it can deeply penetrate people’s lives from many angles. Of course, I also learned how to prevent data leakage and data loss when using digital technology. In the course on the topic of the individual, identity and ethics, the disadvantages of digital technology, such as data leakage and theft of important documents, were also discussed. Therefore, when people are aware of both sides of digital technology, they can make better use of it and keep developing data technology.