Yostivanich

A recent blog post on tech­nol­ogy adop­tion made it’s way to me. The premise of the post is the idea that tech­nol­ogy is start­ing to become so ubiq­ui­tous that youth are accept­ing tech­nol­ogy with­out any hes­i­ta­tion or any great caution.

Ummm, no. This is the same sort of the­ory that has been passed around from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. Post the sex­ual rev­o­lu­tion in the United States, it was thought that youth would all of sud­den have sex like crazed ani­mals with­out any thought to the con­se­quences of their action or what it would mean to them and their part­ners. Didn’t hap­pen, still doesn’t hap­pen. Youth are just as skep­ti­cal of new tech­nol­ogy as any­one else. While they do def­i­nitely more eas­ily see ben­e­fits in using and embrac­ing tech­nol­ogy they also have a clearer out­look on the neg­a­tive side of tech­nol­ogy. Both with regards to pri­vacy, effi­ciency, or just any other con­se­quences you can think of.

I know very few youth who are extremely accept­ing of tech­nol­ogy on any level. When the tech­nol­ogy becomes ubiq­ui­tous such as cell phones or the inter­net is one thing, they accept it because they accepted it a long time ago. How­ever some­thing new they are just as skep­ti­cal as any­one else. The even more amaz­ing thing is that I am see­ing peo­ple who are start­ing to rethink their use of even accepted tech­nolo­gies such as the inter­net as their pri­mary form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I know a girl who just penned a brief note on this very mat­ter yes­ter­day night, won­der­ing about the fact that she no longer com­mu­ni­cates with very many peo­ple out­side of the inter­net where we lose so many of those ticks, facial expres­sions and vocal­ics  that make each of us unique.

Youth will accept tech­nol­ogy eas­ier than pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, but that doesn’t mean that they will accept it with­out any sort of anyal­sis of what the tech­nol­ogy offers in both ben­e­fits and consequences.