Emotional Issues and Technology

Emotional Issues and technology
Emotional implications haven’t been fully studied, but emerging research deals with SNS (Social Networking Sites, such as facebook) and personal life, which certainly impacts our emotional health. Whether this is in a positive or negative manner has not been ascertained. There are issues of unclear expectation (while some people live by their facebook pages, others do not and this inability for people to reconcile with each other the difference between their online and offline world, or if there is such a distinction or why some friends can function solely within a digital environment, other ill at ease with the technology find themselves left out of social situations and vice versa) which are certainly capable of causing distress, but this is most likely due to the need to create boundaries and potentially a short lived phenomena. Further, the blurring of formerly distinct boundaries (work life and social life) can create some emotional and psychological difficulty in adapting to expectations.Further, we must consider that, there is a long set precedent for hysteria and the adoption of new technologies. (From Classical Athens and Socrates story of Atlantis to the industrial revolution and the terrors of ‘railway spine’.) Whether or not this can be allayed is a matter of whether or not we can address the emotional requirements of humans in order to create boundaries, expectations, and help people feel confident in their relationship with digital technologies. Certainly the lack of a cognitive understanding of digital behaviour makes such a job difficult (see reference below)Further, the link between the physical and emotional well-being of any human creates further implications, as stated before, issues of depression can be linked to serotonin depletion (consequent of pineal gland suppression of melatonin release). And of course, the emotional consequences of burn out by potentially being constantly reachable by your office (particularly in high pressure, high profile careers). This is before one even addresses the issue of technology dependence on emotional well-being.Have the emotional factors of digital technology been adequately explored? I would argue that they have not owing to a lack of cognitive understanding as outlined by Potter (2004) and as he points out, we are incapable of creating meaningful educational experiences until such research has been conducted.