With the emergence of many new media platforms that are being integrated into all aspects of education, work, social interactions and everyday life, we are starting to see the increasing effects (both negative and positive) they can have on the basic development of students’ cognitive processes, problem solving and intellectual growth. Many young people have a fixated dependence on or feel a social obligation towards these public new media options: social networking sites, blogs, search engines, etc. Less than 10 years ago people found entertainment through television, simple two dimensional video games, movies, and spending time with friends, talking, laughing and calling each other on the phone.
With new media and the Internet, mediated communication and online information retrieval have become dominant forms of entertainment, available through the internet’s expansion of the free flow of information, social networking or other new media website platforms. The era of “snail mail”, calling on land-lines, going outside, playing board games, and expanding your mind through reading, researching in the library and communicating face-to-face, has been replaced by procrastinating, socially isolated, technologically depended students, parents, individuals world wide with a increasing habit and need towards the fast growth of technology, as well as the introduction to a social networking, and interdependence of people in this newly mounting technological paradigm.
Many students, academics, scientists, psychologists, researchers, and everyday business or common people rely exclusively on Internet communication to transact their affairs, making use of social networking and news sites to gather the information they need at a quick click of a button.
The free flow of information is grounded in a widely accessible platform that is mounting like a disease or virus that engulfs all past forms of obtaining information. For better or worse, there are effects on the maturing generations. Within this new media sphere, the ability to disperse user-generated content has expanded exponentially among all generations, and dramatically among the younger generations of students, and adults. These new media websites let their freely registered users share personal, illegally obtained, and private content, and are escalating rapidly within this developed net neutrality – the principle that the Internet should treat all content the same and equally.
Principle that the Internet should treat all content the same – all content is treated equally. Net neutrality gives internet users equality opportunity get publicity, express opinions and browse the publicly opened Internet. Websites like: Facebook, Twitter, Google, Bebo, Yahoo, and Youtube are not only worth a substantial amount of money, but this platform also brings in a high level of user use and advertising volume. Analyst firm eMarketer Incorporated estimates that Facebook’s ad spending will double to almost $4 billion in 2011 with 2.2 billion coming from the US alone. They also estimate that over 130 million people in the US will be using Facebook’s services in 2011, and over 150 million by 2013 (eMarketer.com). Twitter is expected to earn $150 million in advertising revenue for 2011 and $250 million in 2012. Facebook has more than 500 million active users, and in 2010 Youtube has exceeded over 2 billion views a day (eMarketer.com).
These new media platforms are attracting a market that includes all age ranges of users and provides content, information, material and news. The content that is made available, in any single day, is enough to keep an average person occupied for a lifetime. Along with addictive applications, quick search results, games, research capabilities, and anything that person desires; these new media corporations are developing these platforms for content distribution, readily available for the consumers at home.
Unfortunately, this overwhelming flow of information and modern attraction to these new internet platforms can lead to antisocial, un-social behavior and a distraction from other more important tasks; studying, exams, homework. This all dependence on your home computer, even as the quality of products is decreasing as might be expected by their geometric increase. And even at their best, some forms of information and entertainment are degraded in quality because they are digital simulacra of the genuine thing (movies, music, lectures, books, newsprint).
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