The influence of today’s technology on our mind, part 2.

Hartland Fall Convocation 2018: Tech Transformation

<p>The influence of today’s technology on our mind, part 2.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Hartland Institute of Health and Education

Christian Berdahl

Tech Transformation Part 2

Technology, when I look at it, has constantly evolved in my lifetime.

But what's amazing is it has progressed more in the last 5 years than it has in the previous 50 years.

50 years ago, in fact, even just 25 years ago, everything that we did was infused with human touch.

Today, the world is automated, on demand, instantaneously, instantaneous and increasingly human free.

We have websites and apps for dating, doing our shopping online, ordering food from kiosks, having robotic assembly lines in self-driving cars.

In fact, just earlier this year it was reported that Nissan plans to launch its own self-driving taxi service all throughout Japan.

I don't know if you know that or not, but there are companion robots and you can do anything you want with these companion robots.

And experiences with virtual reality, there are people now that have actually begun to join virtual reality communities to where they'll spend more time in the virtual reality, the virtual worlds that are built, than they do now in the real world.

It's very, very scary, frankly, what's going on.

In fact, in Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia just gave citizenship to a robot.

So there's no doubt that tech can do a lot of amazing things for us.

And indeed, utilizing technology can be a great blessing.

But I wanted to find out, yes, there's a blessing, but what is it doing to us?

Is there any impact on our minds or our body, on our creativity, and on our relationships?

Most of us, unfortunately, can't seem to disconnect or even power down.

When you're out in public, all you have to do is look around.

In fact, I was in an airport recently, and I was in, I was actually in Denver, and in Denver, they have some really long people movers, these long sidewalks that move.

I was having some bad back problems that day, so I was actually on this people mover.

And unfortunately, I had to get to my flight.

Otherwise, I would have gone back around, and I would have videotaped this and played it right now.

As I was going down, there's seats that are right along this pathway.

And we're just all like, going like this and everybody, there was not without exception, young, old, didn't matter where they're from, everybody was like this.

They were on their phones or they were on their devices, they were on their laptops.

Today, the average person checks their, these are the current statistics.

The average person checks their smartphones over 150 times a day.

And I don't do that, so that means someone's probably approaching 300 times a day.

Are we full-blown addicts to our technology?

Is living in a digital age changing us for the better or for the worse?

And what effect is social media having on our society?

And since the web gives us access to all this endless information, what impact is this having on our memory and our attention span?

I used to joke, I'm the guy that would, I would have a lot of information in here, and someone would ask a question, I would probably be able to give you some information.

And now, when someone asks a question, I go, where's my brain?

Can anybody relate to what I'm talking about?

So here's a few of the questions that we are going to be looking at.

We will primarily focus now on social media's impact because these platforms are the ones that consume most of our time.

Social media is the interaction among people in which they create, share, or exchange information and ideas in virtual, I don't like that word, communities and networks.

There are sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and many, many more.

There's actually thousands of these types of sites, but these are the most popular.

Would you like to know how much time we spend on just these types of sites?

Americans spend 74 billion minutes on social media via their home computer, 40.8 billion minutes via apps, and 5.7 billion minutes via mobile web browsers for a total of 121.1 billion minutes on social networking sites alone.

So I thought, this is colossal, but how do I put that into perspective for just how much time that is?

Well, that equals actually 2000000000 hours or 84 million days, or I think a little more profound would be over 230, 000 years.

Every year, and that's just the consumption by Americans.

And I'm not spending that much time on there.

And many people are, so that means people's, they're spending twice what the average is.

So, in just America alone, I believe that we are wasting vast amounts of time.

It almost seems impossible that that's the number, but this indeed is the reality.

Imagine the good that could be done if we were to use that time that many times we're just wasting, not all the time we're wasting, but the time that we are wasting, what if we actually invest that time in our actual communities?

What if we actually invested that time instead of having the virtual relationships, but we actually had face-to-face relationships?

Do you think our relationships could grow and get to a deeper place?

What if we invested some of that time in our relationship with our Savior?

The problem is we're looking and we're so distracted by so many of these devices and this time and these apps and the social networking platforms that we are actually forsaking our time with the Lord and we cry out, We just don't have enough time.

So how much time are you spending on social media, online, for things that are not productive.

Did you know you can put apps on your phone now?

And in fact, some of the new latest iOS software, the operating systems themselves, will actually, you can turn it all on or you can download free apps that it will tell you exactly where you're spending your time and I use the word spending because I've decided that I don't want to just waste my time and spend my time I want to invest my time in the Lord and in with my walk with Him and into other people because when you invest in people it always pays back dividends, amen?

But when you just spend your money it never comes back to you.

According to a study referenced in an article, is the connected generation the alienated generation?

Nearly 40% of Americans spend more time socializing, we looked at this earlier, spend more time socializing via the internet than in real life.

And this is increasing as we go, and the trajectory for this is really quite steep.

And so just a few years ago, it was about 20%, 18%.

And new research has found that social media has the potential to make us less social in real life.

It's a surrogate for the real thing like we talked about this morning.

For being it to be truly effective communication vehicle, all parties bear a responsibility to be genuine and accurate and not allow it to replace human contact altogether.

Further, because most communication is done now via texts and emails, the potential for misinterpretation as we talked about this morning is growing and becoming a problem.

Friendships that were once healthy and strong have been destroyed many times by online communication.

I wonder, when somebody writes a text in all capital letters, what does that mean?

Or are 1 or 2 word responses a sign that a person doesn't want to engage?

Back to Menu

Tech Transformation Part 2

Transcript

Description

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection - Part 2

1h 12m

Battles to Fight and Win

Media, Addiction and Victory

53m

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection - Part 1

1h 14m

Tech Transformation Part 3

55m

What You Call “Grace” Is Actually Compromise

56m

Morning Devotionals

1. The War for Your Mind

1h 5m

Go and Do: New England Conference Youth Week of Prayer

02 Lifestyle of Faith

43m

Media on the Brain - Mini-seminar

1h 21m

The Mind of Christ

Overcoming the Media Trap

34m

Daniel Vis Weekend

01 The Final Warning Revelation 18:1

46m

Plenary

The End in Sight

52m

Sound Doctrine