Excessive use of computer games among young people is a serious medical and social problem. In China it is considered a clinical disorder and there are rehabilitation centers for addicted teenagers. “Gaming Disorder” is included in a just released draft of the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases. Worldwide, 2.6 billion people play video games. In two-thirds of American households, children, teens, and adults are hooked and cannot control their gaming behavior.Psychological research suggests that smartphones, introduced in 2011, contribute to increased rates of teenage anxiety, depression, and even suicide, in the United States.
In a profit-driven society, companies are quick to feed the public’s tech addiction, whatever the social costs. Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are each listed among Fortune magazine’s fifty wealthiest corporations in the world. Annual revenue for the video game industry is expected to exceed $180 billion globally by 2021. Fortnite, the current blockbuster hit has earned over $300 million a month. Fortnite was developed by a company partly owned by the China’s mobile and gaming giant, Tencent, which is division of a conglomerate that includes the world's biggest investment corporation, one of the biggest venture capital firms, and the largest gaming and social media company.
And if you don’t have time for a social life because you are always plugged in, tech companies can solve the problem they created. A Google search for “online dating” pops links to the top ten dating sites and the five “best” sites. According to a CNN report, online dating lowers self-esteem and increases depression, which feeds us right back into our favorite games.
ZeynepTufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, teaches about the social impact of technology and she has a lot of negative things to say about it. In a recent New York Times Sunday Review essay, she discussed the Thailand cave rescue and contrasted Silicon Valley’s belief that everything can be solved through technological innovation and “rapid, flashy, high-profile action” with what she called a “safety culture” model that values expertise and experience. Elon Musk, billionaire prince of the high tech industry, wanted to use a robot mini-submarine to extricate the teenagers trapped underground. The head of the rescue operation rejected Musk’s contraption as impractical and opted to rely on the expertise of experienced rescue divers, a strategy that proved successful.
In the article, Tufekci credited expertise and experience with airline Captain “Sully” Sullenberger’s ability to negotiate a safe landing on the Hudson River in 2009. Altough she did not discuss it, Sully’s human judgment that was originally challenged in a review hearing that used simulations and algorithms that proved to be faulty to raise questions about his decision.
As a prime example of the unreliability of Silicon Valley’s approach to problem solving, throwing money on improbable but impressive-sounding “long shots,” Tufekci criticized Mark “Facebook” Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation that was supposed to transform failing schools in Newark New Jersey through data analysis, digitalized teacher assessment, and charter schools. Newark and Zuckerberg abandoned the plan after it seemed to make the situation worse. The same criticism can be made of Bill “Microsoft” Gates’ small school initiative in New York City that ended up promoting gentrification without significantly improving education.
In the past, Tufekci expressed other major reservations about uncontrolled Tech Love. In a September 2017 TED Talk she warned that "the same algorithms companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon use to get you to click on ads are also used to organize your access to political and social information."Tufekci demanded creation of a "digital economy where our data and our attention is not for sale to the highest bidding authoritarian or demagogue.”
Tufekci, to my knowledge, has not written about how tech love is supposed to transform education in the United States and I hope she does. According to Forbes, in the first half of 2015, private investors poured $2.5 billion into Ed Tech companies, in addition to massive funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. While Ed Tech start-ups and their sponsors like to claim their goal is to “democratize” education by expanding opportunity in underserved inner cities or isolated Third World communities, they are now being exposed for damaging public education in sub-Sahara Africa. In the United States their solution model, throwing money and technology at a problem, and the investment opportunities they see in charter and private schools, contribute to the undermining of public confidence in the experience and expertise of public school educators.
Limits must be placed on our societies blind belief in Tech Love and unrestrained profit hungry tech companies. The biggest problem in the future may be the promotion of on-screen technology in schools starting with children in the youngest grades. It will feed into screen addiction and gaming disorder. Tech love could end of producing a generation of plugged-in zombies.
I hear a buzz. I better check my cell phone for messages!
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