Josephine WilliamTechnology has become an important part of our daily life and sometimes we do not understand the negative effects of technology on society. From waking up with an alarm on our cellphones to calling for a cab through mobile applications, technology has become our companion. Where there are good aspects of utilizing technology, there are technology negative effects on society. It has made our prison in many ways. We cannot step out of our houses without our mobile phones. We don’t go anywhere before searching about it on the internet. Technology has trained us to waste our time in useless activities. It tells us to watch the videos we do not need to watch and spend time in activities we do not need to do in our daily life. There are multiple products that are used as technology tools that keep us engaged in some or other activities. Television, computers, mobile phones, exercise machines, and much more. Let’s discuss some most used technology tools.
Technological Tools and Their Effects
Television
Television plays a vigorous part in children’s world because of its visual and aural attractiveness and entertaining environment. Watching an unnecessary amount of television and videos by children less than two years of age has been stated to knowingly influence language development and behavioral conflicts. Television has so many channels to offer that sometimes we neglect the negative impact of information technology on society.
Computer
Similar to television, computers have developed to be a necessary element in children’s lives. Spending too much time on the computer from an early age can negatively affect academic achievements due to the less concentration, lack of attention and ineffectiveness, immature language skills, creativity, and imagination seen in children as a result of excess computer use.
Video Games
Although there are enough writings about the negative effects of video games on children and youngsters, there has been little work happened on eliminating the effects of video games on young people. Violent video games can lead children to aggressive behavior and stop creative gameplay. Studies have shown that the link between violence in video games and real-life violence is very strong and seems very similar to each other. These games lead to social isolation and a lack of communication with children.
Internet
Studies on the internet’s conceivable effects on early literacy activities have discovered whether the internet offers intentional and unintentional learning chances, and the impact of the internet on early knowledge is still not fully unstated. Negative effects of the internet on society include easy access to illegal, violent, and sexual content, communication with unknown and dangerous people, and excessive dependence on games establishing only a few of these important risks. Anyhow, when we think of the negative impact of digital technology on society, the internet is always at the first number.
Smartphones
Widely increased use of smartphones has been reported to be associated with aggressive, unprotected, socially mismatch, fascination, addiction, and anxiety. It has been reported that those children who are highly engaged with their smartphone during school negatively affects their education and their behavior affects their classmates.
Digital Toys
As digital toys grow and become a crucial part of children’s daily lives, the more and more limited use of outdoor playgrounds possibly will negatively affect the normal development of children. For normal development, children need to spend their time with their peers on the grounds and stay close to nature. The more we teach our children to stay inside amid COVID’19 or Omicron, the more our children stay away from nature.
Effects of Technology on Islam
Where there are good aspects of technology in the preaching of Islam, there are bad aspects too. So many people in different parts of the world have become a part of anti-Islam agendas. Technology is known for spreading trends and information over the globe in a minimum duration and when the topic of discussion is Islam, there are numerous platforms where you can get false information in a blink of an eye. If we look at the aspects that cause hate about Islam in the general public, we will see that there are hundreds of people in the western part of the world who are not Muslims and they spend a lot of their time spreading negativity through Islam. How hatred does reach people around the globe? How do people get convinced about hating Islam and how do people believe the negativity about Islam?
Harmful Applications
There are many applications available online that are imposing negative impacts on Islam. These applications are contributing a lot to the negative aspects and our society is diverted this way in a large number. We can see so many people adopting western trends and living an abnormal life that is totally against the Islamic spectrums. The young generation is drifting apart from the right path while we see the majority of elderly people trying to fit in the race of perfectionism. There are so many things that should be held accountable for the negative impacts of the technology in Islam and society but the biggest source of this root cause is the easy availability of inappropriate platforms like Tiktok, Snack Video, Musically, and other unethical applications. These applications let you choose a song and ask you to make a video of your own on the selected song. This leads people to act in an unethical way.
TikTok Promotes Bad Comparisons
The same can be said of many social media platforms, but this seems to be the case with TikTok. TikTok gives you short video clips of the lives of others from around the world. With the video platform, it seems to sound personal and intimate. Videos on TikTok often give false impressions of truth. The virtual reality removed from these videos is brilliant, well-tuned, and touchable. Like anything, if you compare your daily life with someone else’s bright reel, you will probably find yourself comparing. There are very few people who share common, everyday things on social media. It is important to remember this difference when eating TikTok videos.
Also, this is not the only negative effect of TikTok. False information and misguidance are spread on all social media. However, I think it is important to mention this as a negative result of the use of TikTok. I personally accepted the false information as true after seeing it on TikTok. After that experience, I now fully realize that the information released on TikTok is not always reliable. With an open platform that allows almost everyone to produce and publish content, it can be expected that not everything will be 100% true. It is important to understand the prevalence of inaccurate information when using TikTok. Use this as an opportunity to become a reliable media buyer. Check facts before believing what you see, read, or hear on TikTok (any social media site).
The demonization of Islam through Technology
To know how demonization is used as an armament of domination in the case of #StopIslam and the part of Instagram in this procedure, mixed practice is used, qualitative methods to explore the hashtag grounded on the “five walls of Islam phobic hate” and a review of the literature by means of the Web of Science and Scopus, under the search criteria and their Boolean algorithms” demonization”, “social media” and “Islam”, relations which are encompassed in both Spanish and English and quantitative methods using SPSS to assess the dates. This controlled to a review of the grounded philosophy with which the same epistemological, ontological, and theoretical forms would be connected.
Social Media, Demonization and Islam
With the extensive usage of the Internet, the way by which the inhabitants interrelate has been adapted. Communication is to be more communicating. Operators can produce social media content by becoming presumes and adapting the usual communication arrangement. Since the mid-2000s, social media revolved around fashion and a place where one and all wants to be; stages as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Instagram produce content and keep folks focused on it for numerous hours. The term “social media” marks one think whether not entire media are social in some way. This depends on how social media is assumed. In the contemporary study, social media is going to be understood, conferring to Fuchs, under public and communication criteria. Social media is measured as a social structure collected by a set of managers related to some conditions. Moreover, it allows making new business chances, transforming social development, and consolidating existing relationships in the offline world to build new links.
There is a never-ending list of social media platforms that includes Facebook, Youtube Twitter, Linkedin, and much more. However, Instagram is the most visited social media platform according to general statists of 2020 is the social platform with the highest upsurge in users during the period of Covid-19 pandemic quarantine. This platform was created in 2010 and was considered to be one the most less used platform but by the end of 2020, this platform was the most visited platform amongst all other platforms. This platform allows you to watch pictures and videos of people around the world. Categories include Do it yourself, cooking, fashion, satisfying videos, small vlogs, celebrity activities and pictures, and much more. Furthermore, another study confessed and provided evidence that Instagram has been the fastest growing social network since it was first launched. If talking about the trends of Instagram, it is more like a proper attack on Islam at times.
Results
Let’s discuss the results of the negative impacts of technology on Islam and society we have a long list of impacts. You can read them all below.
Hatred
One of the biggest impacts left on society by technology is hatred. Hate content is easily found and people are too busy following the trends that they do not bother about finding the true information. Hate has become a normal part of our society that when we see someone with no hate we are unable to accept that person. We are so used to hate now that even talking about spreading love has become a difficult task.
Inferiority Complex
The artificial happiness of technology has drowned a huge number of people into the inferiority complex and so many people die of their mental state every year. People tend to be happy and rich on social media while the reality is different. People fake their lifestyle on social media and pretend to be someone they are not in reality. These people set the living standards so high but fake. These fake standards are very tough to beat but still, so many people are trying to beat them every day. People spend a huge amount of money on the things they do not need, just to impress the people around them and live the fake life they see on the technology. so many people and their lifestyle is destroyed in the means of finding the fake lifestyle they prioritize due to technology.
Misconceptions
When talking about misconceptions caused by Social Media, we have Islam on the top of the list. So many people around the globe have been spreading misconceptions about Islam, its history, its followers, and its reality. These people are known as anti-Muslims and they are always spreading misguidance about Islam through every platform they can get access to.
Racism
Technology has somehow promoted racism around the globe. The distance between the white and the black people has increased to an extent that even in the latest era people are dying because of their skin color. Racism is not limited to people only. The current generation has even stopped adopting the black and dark tone pets too. While what Islam commands us is as follow:
“All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black, nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action.” (The last Sermon of Prophet Muhammad)
Julia
