Marco-Tomas Ambrogi-Torres Dempster UNIV 112 9 November 2015 On October 21, 2015, Back to the Future Day – the day that Doc Brown and Marty McFly blasted into the past – showed us all how different things were just 30 years ago, and how technology and inventions have progressed, in ways we predicted and ways we couldn’t have imagined. In McFly’s own words, “That’s heavy.” Screen-based technology, hereafter referred to simply as technology, has become a major part of most everyone’s life in the past 20 years, and its influence is especially prevalent in adolescents and children. Whether or not this is beneficial or harmful is something that has been debated time and time again, but there has yet to be a consensus on the subject. The topic of technology’s effect on development has been poked and prodded at by psychological research but not much has been changed as a result of that research. With more in-depth research and analysis, this information could provide insights on to how to best use technology to facilitate positive development in youth. Understanding how technology affects adolescent development can help us understand how to best utilize its capabilities correctly for children. It is already known that the adolescent brain is able to adapt itself to its environment, making adolescents and children the perfect candidates to adopt new technology. Most prevalent among these technologies is communication technology, which can have both positive and negative effects on social development. Technology can also be invaluable in middle and high school classrooms to help facilitate learning, however there are still other types of technology that can distract from the learning environment, making it difficult for institutions to really implement the full scope of technology available. For all these reasons, it is still unclear if technology is beneficial to child and adolescent development or not. Technology presents clear advantages and disadvantages to human development, but there is still a fair amount of gray area and dissenting opinions on certain matters. The primary reason why research on technology’s effect on humans is focused on adolescents and children is due to the way the brain is structured at this point in life. Adolescence is set apart from other stages of the human life cycle by a number of behavioral changes, but along with these is the way the brain is able to adapt in response to changes in its environment. This term is referred to as “plasticity,” as defined by Jay Geidd, an M.D. working at the National Institute of Mental Health (101). Humans also have a long period o time where they are dependent on others for support, making it easy for our brains to adapt to changing demands as we get older. Speaking from an evolutionary standpoint, this allowed humans to adapt themselves to be able to survive in any environment, making humans one of the most adaptable species (Geidd. 101). This necessity for adaptation early in life can explain why young people are more involved with newer technologies and can learn to use them efficiently: Their brains are essentially designed to do just that. After puberty, the human brain matures by growing more specialized (Geidd. 101). With brain maturation comes the process of myelination. According to Francis Steen, a communications studies professor at UCLA, adding a protective casing around neurons called myelin increases the diameter of the axons, thereby speeding up neurotransmitter rates (Steen). This process marks the transition to the adult brain; myelination impedes the growth of new connections in the brain, thus slowing down the “plasticity” that defines the adolescent brain (Geidd. 101). The “plasticity” of younger brains is what makes children and adolescents candidates to better adopt changes in technology, and as we grow older we become less able to adopt these changes. Understanding the biology behind the adolescent brain makes it clear why adolescents and children are the early adopters of new technology, and why this technology has the biggest effect on them. One of the most widely adopted technologies is screen-based technology used for communication. According to Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Patricia Greenfield – professors of psychology at California State University and the University of California, Los Angeles, respectively – email, text messaging, and instant Messaging are among the most widely used forms of online communication technology (120). One main concern among psychologists is the effects that communication technology has on social development of children and teens. In a longitudinal study carried out by researchers Robert Kraut, William Scherlis, Tridas Mukhopadhyay, Jane Manning, and Sara Kiesler at Carnegie Mellon University, a diverse number of families were given computers and Internet access in their homes for the first time between the years of 1995 and 1998 (Subrahmanyam et al. 8). In this study, teens and children used their computers for a number of uses, but mostly their usage patterns concentrated on communicating with friends outside of school and, after a period of time, strangers whom they met online (Subrahmanyam et al. 18-19). This shows that from its inception, the Internet was popular mainly as a form of communication, as it is today. Whether or not this is a good thing for adolescents is a topic still debated by psychologists and other experts today.
Culture defines the people you work with and the way you work. One job I recently left is a completely different culture than the one I took up. I recently left a restaurant job where the management and some of the other staff knew each other outside of work and hung out after work was done. The people who all knew each other were very tight-knit and had a lot of fun with themselves, but those who weren’t a part of this “circle” were somewhat excluded. The fact that I had worked there for over a year gave me an edge, and everyone respected and liked me, but the different types of people and how they interacted lead to a culture based on friendship and less on professionalism. By contrast, my new job is a small interior design company run by a family friend. Knowing her outside of work, I had an idea that she was a very serious, driven woman, and she brought that to her business too. Everything is about being professional in her business, from the dress standards to the way we interact with each other and the people we serve. The culture is very focused on professionalism and putting the best face forward, and though we have laughs and can have fun, it’s a much more serious workplace than my last one. A job’s culture defines how people interact with each other and how they get work done. Having a good culture for the business environment you are in can make or break your business. Changing this culture to one that fits the business and helps it thrive can be an arduous task, but is very important to ensuring the long-term success of any business. Organizational culture in and of itself is a difficult thing to grasp. If you ask anyone in the business world about it, they will all be able to tell you that a) it exists, and b) it is very important to shaping the behavior of a company. One thing they won’t be able to give you a straight answer on is what exactly it is. In understanding organizational culture, it’s important to know its role within a company. Culture establishes the norms within a company, i.e. how things are done normally. It also determines the way individuals within an organization think, feel, and act as a single unit. Thus, we can see that it is developed by the entire organization: Employees, leadership, stakeholders, company policy, and individual and shared values all have a role in shaping culture, among a plethora of other determinants within a company. Considering many different parts make up organizational culture, it’s a difficult concept to define within any organization. Culture is focused on instinct, and it is made up of habits and emotional that people have made repetitive to the point that they don’t even think about it. Beyond that, culture is constantly changing within an organization, so it’s harder still to effectively determine what parts need to be addressed more than others Since we’ve determined that culture is this big, scary beast that no one has seen or knows how to define, why would anyone go through the trouble? It seems as though it’s more difficult to change something you can’t define than it is to just deal with it. Furthermore, since culture cannot be overhauled by traditional methods, more nuanced methods are required, taking even more time and money. Changing a company’s culture may seem difficult in the short-term, but can provide a host of benefits for the long-term. Engrained within a company’s culture is an immense amount of emotional energy that can be put into the business in a positive manner. When a culture is at its worst, people are unmotivated and don’t want to put all of themselves into the company. This results in energy being wasted and a decline in productivity. The company doesn’t receive the full benefits that its employees can bring in this situation. Consequentially, a company with a positive culture that fosters employee engagement receive boundless success as the employees dedicate themselves to their work and have a desire to do their best. Research has shown that companies which committed to using informal approaches to drive their culture into a new direction were significantly more likely to see positive change that lasted. 70% of firms who effectively used elements of informal cultural change experienced “sustainable improvement in organizational pride and emotional commitment” (“10 Principles of Culture”). It can be seen that organizational culture is an emotional aspect to employees, and those who are emotionally committed to the company they are in can work with the company to accelerate it in a positive direction.
Da piccolo, ero un bambino contento e obbediente. Non ero molto capriccioso, ma ho dito le bugie qualche volta. La mia sorella era un po’ viziata, ma non io. Sono paziente e non piangevo molto. Volevo bene a mia madre, perché solamente parlavo spagnolo da bambino. Prima di andare alla scuola, la mia mamma me insegnava spagnolo, così solamente potevo parlare con lei. Oggi ancora, voglio bene a mi mamma, ma ancora posso parlare inglese. Non penso che avevo paura di qualche cosa, ma non mi piacevano i ragni. Di mattina, di lunedì da venerdì, io e i miei fratelli andavamo a scuola. I nostri genitori ci portavamo a scuola. Andavo a St. Michael’s con la mia sorella. Mi piacevano studiare scienza e letteratura, ma non ero bravo in matematica. Le mie insegnanti erano brave, e me aiutavano molte quando ero bambino. Al weekend, io e i miei fratelli giocavamo insieme, o io andavo a le case de miei amici. Si il tempo era bello, giocavamo fuori, ma si era brutto, siamo rimasti dentro. Di pomeriggio, ritornavamo a casa e il mio fratello sempre faceva i suoi compiti. Io e la mia sorella giocavamo insieme, fuori o dentro da casa. Anche giocavo molte con le macchinine, spesso giocavo fuori da casa solo. Di piccoli, noi non guardavamo la televisione molte. Qualche volta, guardavo Star Trek con il mio fratello e il mio padre.
No lines are longer than 80 characters, TYVM. Other specified properties aren't being scored automatically at this time so this is not necessarily good news...