The Impact of IT on Individuals

Impact of IT on Individuals

- How IT has changed the way we spend our leisure time. 

With the recent developments in technology, many people own a device used for personal use, this has been apparent with the younger generation due to how easily accessible devices are nowadays. 
 
For example, many people use computers to play online games to bring some sort of entertainment. Whilst this is quite the entertaining activity, it reduces the amount of people going outside to hang out with other people, resulting in less exercise from outside activities. 
 
Another thing that IT changes is how we watch films. Everyone has watched at least one film, either on a DVD or from a streaming service such as Netflix. While these are useful due to local movie theatres costing £20+ just to go to a movie theatre, buy a ticket and sit down to watch a movie in a rather uncomfortable setting, it makes people less social due to growing accustomed to only watching DVDs or Movies on these streaming services rather than going out to see them yourself, though you can’t exactly blame people for the absurd prices and low-quality experience from a normal movie theatre. 

 
- How IT has changed the way we learn. 
 
IT allows us to learn more effectively thanks to the use of sites such as Google or informational sites such as Wikipedia, there are not exactly many negatives of using these sites for research. However, it is important to note that not all information on the internet is going to be truthful, meaning that some information could be false if the proper research is not going to be done. This makes some learning tools such as books effective in some cases due to all the information needing to be truthful. 
 
This also applies to teaching in schools, technology is a huge help due to mapping out assignments for the class or just for simple yet important things like registration, communication or just teaching in general. Some may argue that not using technology to teach is better due to it helping students focus, which I can agree with due to students also being extremely distracted by technology which results in slower learning. 
 
 

 
 
 
- How IT has changed the way we communicate. 
 
The main feature of technology for younger people is the methods of communication that are easily accessible to many people for free, such as Skype, WhatsApp, or any other basic phone applications used to call people across cities or countries due to how easy it is to reach out to someone. I believe that this is a great way of getting younger people to communicate with each other. However, this can also be a bad idea due to people being less social, as you won’t be able to see the person you are talking to face-to-face, and this is explicit due to how many older people have tried to chat with younger audiences to get information that is personal. 
 
And whilst it is nice that it's so easy to reach other people using messaging apps on any device, the problem stems from the fact that it’s an easy outlet to allow cyberbullying on many platforms, which leads to mental health issues in children. And the fact that anyone can message you at any time to make these remarks or comments about one another whilst also having no punishment makes it a very helpful yet dangerous tool when it comes to the safety of children and even adults online. 

 
One of the worst problems is that any type of information you have can be shared by anyone, even if its personal. This leads to younger more gullible people to share information that could be shared across multiple platforms to all types of people that could do bad things with said information. And while being able to send your information to anyone for important reasons such as to banks, schools and to jobs, you can still share it to the wrong people.

 
 
- How IT has impacted our health and the amount of exercise we do. 
 
Many people now use applications that are sometimes built into a device such as a watch or phone to track your bodily information. BPM, Blood Pressure, Weight Gain etc. This is an amazing tool to track your health, making sure that you are never at risk of a sudden attack or worse. However, due to how dangerous these things seem, people get way too obsessive over their health, despite nothing being wrong. This leads to anxiety, extreme weight gain or loss based on health results or starving due to not getting the right nutrients that the body needs to stay healthy. 
 
However, it also helps us track how many activities have been done. This could be how many miles you have ran in a day or week, how many exercises have been done, how long you have been doing a specific exercise and to tell you when to rest for your body to be in shape. It seems innocent enough at first, but since it sets goals for you to achieve to keep fit, it also discourages further exercise. When people pass a goal on the application, they give up. Run 10 Miles, then they stop exercising. It makes people lazier, not wanting to exercise for themselves but rather to just keep up the expectations that the applications force onto you, which can be extremely damaging to mental health and physical health due to not doing enough, being a leading cause to obesity.