The Dual Identities of Generation Z: Navigating Ethics and Politics in a Data-Driven Society
Introduction
As members of Generation Z, we live in a data-driven society, similar to juggling two distinct yet identical worlds where everyone possesses dual or multiple identities. The digital age is like a double-edged sword, providing us with convenience and ushering in a new era while also bringing with it a host of unpredictable adverse consequences.
Generation Z
The citizens of Generation Z, broadly described as individuals born between 1995 and 2010, can be regarded as true digital natives. They have grown up exposed to the internet, social networks, and mobile systems.
Digital society
Paperless and electronic methods have established norms in a society where everything is run using digital technology.
Ethics
Ethics is‘the moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conduct of an activity’.
Different Identity Boots Freedom of Expression
The advent of the digital age has increased online self-expression in various capacities. People can choose their gender, race, appearance, and even individuality. For instance, introverts may be more proficient at debating and expressing opinions online; violent individuals may pose as modest lambs online; older men may act as teenage girls and many more.
The internet offers people a unique platform to express their views. Even today, the meaning and boundaries of this right of expression are constantly evolving as society strives for a balance between freedom of expression and abuse.
Positive Impact: More Justice, More Safety
The influence of digital society can be favourable. For instance, young girls who have been sexually abused can utilise the internet to look for assistance and unite against the formidable ‘enemy’ of real life. Young females nowadays use social media to speak out against rape culture and to hold its proponents accountable when mainstream news media, police, and school authorities do not.
The emergence of digital society provides users with a neutral means of communicating with one another, allowing more women to recognise the necessity to guard against abuse, whether coming out in solidarity or under another pseudonym.
It enables more people, particularly vulnerable ones, to be heard, supported, saved, and protected.
Negative Impact: Violence
Stopbullying.gov. research has shown that social media has been acknowledged as a weapon for adolescents to engage in violent behaviour towards their peers, such as bullying, harassment, dating aggression, and gang crimes, and the victims of cyberbullying are twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts in 2022.
Therefore, the empowerment of freedom of speech in the digital age has also given more room for human malice, from minor cyberbullying, to the most violent extremists rallying everywhere through the internet to commit crimes in real life. The digital culture created by social media has allowed people to express themselves openly or secretly, but also a place where numerous types of violence have surfaced.
For instance, several British teenagers used TikTok to publicize the recent International Rape Day, which attracted numerous followers. This is concerning because those powerless to censor information might readily mimic their actions by clinging to viral short videos, which can kill their future and cause harm to others.
The inclusivity and equality of digital society, while enabling us to access individuals inaccessible in the actual world, also allow violence to encircle and destroy us quickly. The weakened judgement of low educated people and younger children are more prone to being duped by online information and committing crimes.
Therefore, the government should enforce age restrictions, post limits, and enhance cyber security. Due to the existence of digital words, the government should pay more attention to popularising legal information and enhancing citizens’ discernment skills than it does in traditional education. This is a matter of urgency.
Human Rights
Big data is propelled and examined, everybody is viewed as data, and everyone’s privacy is monitored and shared by websites, with or without consent.
With privacy gone, digital words violate Equality and Human Rights, which declares that one has the right to live discreetly without government intrusion. Large corporations like Facebook and Google have monitored and gathered statistics on using customer information to compete with business rivals.
Chinese apps and technology companies collect customer data with the government’s tacit sanction to track residents and potentially influence international relations and politics.
For instance, Tencent is required under the new government regulations to oversee WeChat (the most popular chat app in China) conversations in the nation to detect politically sensitive terms, such as including names of well-known activists or those connected to anti-communist activities. The measure follows a prior prohibition on various platforms, like Weibo (a popular Chinese app used to post pictures and articles). The accounts of users who violate the terms are terminated or blocked. Although this type of behaviour brings unease and negativity to the world’s citizenry, governments opt to keep quiet and acquiesce to companies’continued monitoring and data collection.
On November 24th 2022, a high-rise building caught fire during the Xinjiang lockdown, killing ten individuals due to epidemic policy and regulation concerns. The government could have initially reported the news but concealed and deleted the information since the facts were against the epidemic prevention policy. People who shared the news or discuss this issue on social media sites like WeChat or Weibo faced penalties, including account blocking, or they may even lose access to any pertinent images or conversations supplied to them. Governments and capitalists were free to remove comments and exert control over them by hiring paid internet trolls to sway public opinion and what people view.
In a digital society, the ‘human’ as a citizen is entirely transparent. Every word he says, and opinion he posts is tracked, investigated, and even listened to, regulated, and exploited by governments and software. Big technology companies will gather everything about him and use it as a weapon against their business rivals or for government usage; His every action — everything he sees, hears, and even says — needs to ‘get permission’ from the authorities.
The existence of the digital society is more akin to providing the capitalists with a shield or a sword. They view the digital citizen as a marionette who must behave and think according to the established rules and develop their capacity to accomplish their objectives.
In this case, digital society exists more as a means for governments and capitalists to manage society than it is a better place for individuals to live. It is challenging to determine whether one is a citizen or merely a tool in their view.
Ethically, we should be granted the human right to freedom and equality, both in the digital society and the real world. For whatever cause, excessive, non-consensual data surveillance should be made illegal. People’s privacy should be protected rather than observed and abused, and their opinions should be heard rather than overridden.
Reflection:
Challenge
Before enrolling in this course, I rarely voiced my ideas or wrote blog posts casually. The new writing structure and format were quite tricky for me. Additionally, the course was delivered in a novel manner, asynchronous learning, instead of in-person, which was a challenge for me.
Improvements and Applications
As a student majoring in economics, I continuously learned how to write blog posts in an informal language and use Medium from this course. This enhances my writing style and writing abilities. The new teaching methodology also strengthened my self-control and ability to learn independently since I could arrange my class time freely. Besides the professor’s blog, remarks left by my classmates also taught me so many things.
Moreover, as a member of Gen Z, this course has tremendously broadened my perspectives and increased my awareness of the environment in which I live. I gained new insights into potential career paths and a better understanding of the internet’s development and history.
This course covers more than just social media and digital words but also a synthesis of knowledge in philosophy, anthropology, and sociology. From various standpoints, I gained a more thorough understanding of how people and data, reality and virtuality, are connected in today’s digital society and viewed the whole society more comprehensively. It also helped me realise that learning only the content of economics majors is not enough, and I need to strengthen my digital and computer abilities to find more irreplaceable knowledge and skills to prevent being eliminated in the future labour market.
This course equipped me with the expertise necessary to think critically based on the course’s theme, providing me with a wealth of knowledge and flexible scheduling options. Additionally, it allowed me to investigate and reflect thoroughly on the implications of this digital age.
