internet tv video games and American culture

Improve the paper based on the teacher’s comment, u can change the title. Topic is to talk about technology and American culture.

With the advancement of technology, technology devices have entered thousands of households. People can easily access the Internet, TVs and electronic games. While technology facilitates our life, it also brings some negative effects. What does the big data era represent? It represents the high concentration of fragmented information. It is normal for people to over-receive negative information on the Internet and form distorted values when their values are not finalized. This article explains the adverse effects of technology devices on human mental and physical health in details and how Americans think and treat these effects. These are very serious problems in today’s society. The negative effects of mental health include many diseases such as depression and autism and the number of people with similar symptoms is still increasing rapidly. The psychological impact brings huge change in people’s behaviors and attitudes. Meanwhile, the negative effects of physical health include people’s sitting, weight, vision and cardiovascular health (Muse&Steinhubl, 2016).

The proper use of technology is beneficial for human life. However, the technology devices truly influence human mental health badly in a certain extent.

In the United States, more than two million people with mental depression receive treatment each year. Unfortunately, the number of people with depression is still increasing even though there is a big part of teenagers has similar symptoms.

Some scientists state that there is a close relationship between depression and social media platforms. A study in 2013 found that young people who regularly use Facebook are more likely to feel unhappy than those who do not use it often. Some scientists had came up with an experiment. They chose some people who had mild depression and randomly assigned these people into two different groups. One group was required to keep using the social media apps regularly while the other group was required to reduce much time on social media apps. After a few weeks, the scientists reported that people who used less time on social media apps had a happier mood and felt less lonely. Their symptoms of depression also got better (Jonathan&Nick, 2020).

For some people, social media sites may trigger their feelings of inferiority or jealousy. The users may see other people’s richer and more colorful lives, or good appearance and body shape, and then have comparison psychology. Some users choose to make the unfriendly comments to satisfy the feelings of jealously. Some people make themselves feel inferior by comparing with others. If they cannot treat the information with normal views, their mood will be influenced badly. This is also related to the aforementioned incidence of depression.

In the modern society, many people rely on social media platforms to communicate with others. However, the online communication cannot replace the communication in real life, and they are totally different. Real communication requires people to respond in a timely manner based on the performance of the other party. Without enough experience in setting up the relationship with others in real life, people’s communication ability will be hindered. They will afraid of taking with others or meeting with strangers. They prefer to keep themselves alone at home. At last, autism is born generally. Besides, online interpersonal communication is not reliable. This is why people are cheated of money by others on the Internet.

The online violence is a huge problem not only for adults but also for teenagers.

There are many TV commercials and almost all of the TV commercial advertisements are idealized. Idealization means that everything that happens in advertising is ahead of the current culture and it is totally different with the real life. The advertisement shows that the sexy and liberated woman is smoking, and thus more common American women start to smoke to pursue sexiness and liberation. Actually, just a small part of commercial advertisements can promote the development of American culture and the remaining will make the center of culture shifts.

There are different types of information online and some of them are related to violence. When parents use the technology devices to receive information, the children also inevitably have access to them. There are many violent and bloody pictures on the Internet and plots in TV shows or video games which includes fighting, murder and rape. These information affects our thoughts and behaviors subtly. According to John Murray, a research psychologist at Kansas State University, he considers whether it is a TV show, the news of Internet or a video game, violence on the screen first fascinates children and reduces their defense capabilities, and then treats violence as an acceptable way to solve the problem.

People tend to be curious and easy to imitate others. Some ways of treating others presented on the Internet and TV are often applied to real life by people especially for children. Most children are very curious and like to imitate others. They do not have good self-control ability and cannot distinguish something right or wrong. They feel interested in the behaviors of some unreal characters they like and follow them up (Michele et al., 2008). With the imitation of violent behaviors, school bullying occurs. School bullying causes the inequality among students. The perpetrators will go to jail, and the soul of the victims is traumatized, and they may choose to commit suicide. Even if they did not commit suicide, most of them are depressed and autistic, and afraid of contact with others. School bullying seriously affects the normal growth of students. America is a multicultural country, and there is a super low tolerance between different races. The number of races in each state is different, the race with the larger number will become the mainstream. The minority may become a vulnerable group. There are also black slaves in American history, and the family concept in some states still contains racial discrimination. In cases of school violence and abuse, the United States punishes the perpetrators more severely. American law pays more attention to personal values such as personal safety, freedom, and privacy. US law not only stipulates the responsibility of courts to impose criminal punishments on them, but also stipulates the right of schools to impose administrative punishments on students. American schools adopt a zero-tolerance policy for campus bullying. Once a school discovers a bullying incident, it must act immediately, and students can be expelled directly.

The online violence also includes cyber bullying. In cyber violence, participants’ irrational attacks violated the parties involved in the incident, causing harm to the parties’ body and mind, and directly invaded the parties’ real lives. Netizens are no longer limited to attacking the parties through language or images on the Internet, but directly infiltrate the virtual society into the real society through human flesh search methods, harassing the real life of the parties (Alexander et al., 2014). There are several gangs on the Internet, and they have the specific purpose to let the parties ruined. Some people will use legal laws to protect own rights and some people choose to commit suicide because they cannot stand the bullying. The big part of netizens involved in cyber bullying is also the teenagers. The Pew Research Center shows that most American teenagers have experienced cyberbullying and girls are more likely to be the victims. Most American teenagers think that the US government does not do a great job to solve the problem of cyberbullying. The US president claims that adults should play an important role in helping teenagers solve the problem. Adults should listen to teenagers’ worries and concerns and the US government need to make much effort to provide the safe online environment for teenagers.

Reference List

Evan, D., &Steven, R.S. (2016). International Mobile-Health Intervention on Physical Activity, Sitting, and Weight: The Stepathlon Cardiovascular Health Study. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735109716015254

Hadit, J., &Allen, N. (2020). Scrutinizing the effects of digital of technology on mental health. News & Views Forum. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00296-x

Rozental, A., Andersson,G., Boettcher, J., Ebert, D. D., Cuijpers, P., Knaevelsrud, C. (2014). Consensus statement on defining and measuring negative effects of Internet interventions. Internet Interventions (2014). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260811811_Consensus_statement_on_defining_and_measuring_negative_effects_of_Internet_interventions

Comment： You seem to have most of your sources used correctly, but uour big problem is that you’re focusing a lot of information that would apply to every single culture or human, and not things you see specifically in American culture. You’re writing an argument paper about technology and health, rather than how technology has changed how Americans think, feel, believe technology affects their health.