The Chemical, Social and Creative Ways Tech Is Improving Our Lives
I’m not normally the first person to rave about tech. Rather, I’m the smug person bonding with anyone 40+, agreeing that life was (or so I’ve been told), simpler and fuller in the good ol’ days.
Yet in reality, tech is an essential and surprisingly fulfilling part of everyday life.
Just recently, it was tech that helped my sister deliver 1000 ladybugs (yes they were real) to the front door of her best friend as a birthday surprise.
Tech was also behind the neat app that had me yelling directions in broken Spanish, while hitchhiking in the back of a “vintage” (just old, too old, definitely unroadworthy) pickup truck.
Clearly, the benefits of tech are wide ranging. Here are a few of the best:
1. Be happier
Recent studies have shown that receiving more likes on Facebook actually releases dopamine, a brain chemical that is associated with pleasure.
Scarier still, moving or sad posts can release oxytocin, what’s known as the “love hormone”, giving us the feeling of being protected.
If that’s what just “likes” and status updates are capable of, imagine what an entire Snapchat video can do for us.
2. Bond with your favourite humans
There is now extensive data that suggests social media consumers are having more conversations — online and offline.
Despite run-of-the-mill criticism that suggests tech is responsible for feelings of isolation and social disconnection, tech is actually increasing the amount of time we’re spending socialising with our mates.
It’s also changing the way we communicate. We have new dimensions disrupting the traditional realms of communication. Emojis, memes, gifs, videos, filters, add-ons, likes, love and other mysterious faces (cheers facebook) are putting your average five senses to shame.
We’re spicing up everyday interaction in a way that actually makes it more appealing and more likely we will stay in touch with people we don’t have the time and means to catch up with regularly.
So instead of writing, “hey babe, how are you?” (how totally boring), we get someone like Joey to do it for us.
We’ve also seen a transition in who we are connecting with. Rather than staying in touch with the girl next door, we’re connecting that random person who, like ourselves, happens to longboard like a mofo.
In other words, we’re bonding based upon interests and mutual passions rather than geographical location or circumstance.
Grounded in commonality, we’re now more likely to build fulfilling bonds with our buddies that lead to collaboration later on. Be it creative or fun projects, professional skill-sharing or just a constructive coffee sesh.
Personally, I’ve benefited from the female-ruled Facebook group doubling as a engaged sharing platform — Like Minded Bitches Drinking Wine. They’ve successfully established a trusted community of female entrepreneurs through developing a space where people really do help each other out (sometimes more so than an old friend would). The platform is successful because its participants are united by a shared passion — in this case, entrepreneurial business and the empowerment of women in the startup field.
3. Achieve real life social change
A kitty video gone viral is admittedly common. However, what about those social campaigns targeted at doing something more?
Our generation is feeling the weight of negative buzzwords like “slacktivism” or “hashtag activism”. Online social campaigns are being palmed off as mere warm and fuzzy sentiments that make us feel like we’re doing something by putting a # on it.
We’re asked to make the transition from changing the way we think to changing the way we behave.
4. Establish a social enterprise
We’re seeing some hefty innovation emerging from the startup field.
Millennials are pushing aside the rigidity and red tape restrictions of traditional big business and embarking on their own projects.
Yet, it’s not just apps and other tech startups that are benefiting from the leaps forward in technology, it’s also the field of social enterprise.
Alongside more available funding to those who foster creative solutions to common problems on platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, we are also starting to use tech more effectively to achieve sustainable development, locally and abroad.
40K Globe, a social enterprise founded by uni students, makes use of iPads in an after-school program to improve education for school kids in India. They built an app based on the theories of gamification, eliminating the ongoing costs needed to train and employ teachers.
It incorporates a series of peer-to-peer mentoring exercises, providing a revolutionary learning framework that can be facilitated by anyone, while still giving the rightful place that real life communication has in educational development.
The business model is sustainable, cost-effective and of course, its success is founded on tech.
5. Create more
Social media is actually encouraging us to create more, even those of us who don’t necessarily identify as creative.
Unlike the passivity of one-way tech consumption like the T.V., social media begs for you to engage, batting its eyelashes until you give in and create content of your own.
We can be photographers (Instagram), videographers (Snapchat), chefs and crafties (Pinterest), artists (Tumblr), comedians (YouTube) and activists/journalists/anyone-we-want-to-be (Facebook).
Subconsciously, we’re exploring new skills in a way that feels natural and unintimidating. For example, you might not be gung ho enough to join a photography club but hey, you can learn photoshop from a few YouTube videos and post your work on Instagram like the rest of the world.
How to move forward
The downside of tech is that like anything new and shiny that continues to churn out even newer and even shinier things, it can become difficult to manage.
In an industry that has escalated wildly in the last 25 years, it’s natural that we’re still working out what role it should and should not have in our lives. Like kids that have never been in a candy store before, the instinct is to consume until we feel terminally ill.
However, if we reflect on the role that tech has in our lives, putting gentle boundaries in place, we can make our peace with tech and revel in its juicy parts.
Simple cues can make a world of difference — like putting your phone in sleep mode (while working, concentrating or just sleeping), turning off push notifications on Facebook Messenger or downloading this app to track your daily phone usage (try not to freak out).
Challenge Yourself
If you’re feeling as though your tech consumption is becoming a little self-indulgent and excessive, I challenge you to NOT post anything with even the vaguest connection to yourself on social media for the next 7 days.
Originally published by Pip Denne at The Vocal
