Technology & Literacy: A Double Edged Sword
- Olivia Lupisella
- Dec 7, 2020
- 3 min read

As a student in the twenty-first century, especially during a global pandemic, technology is a part of my daily life. I use my computer to write papers, complete online homework assignments, do research, and much more. When I’m not using my computer for school work, I’m scrolling through Instagram, TikTok, texting etc. So my life is pretty much consumed by technology.
Technology has both improved and destroyed various aspects of modern society. It has made communication instantaneous, which is helpful in making important information accessible to most people in an efficient and timely manner, but also makes it easier for fake news (check out my blog post on fake news!) and malicious information to spread. So as you can see, technology is a double edged sword.
Texting & Literacy
As for technology’s impact on modern day literacy, I think John McWhorter said it best in his Ted Talk. Here he explains that technology only helps literacy evolve by creating new ways for people to communicate and speak freely and casually. Basically, technology helps to spread new slang and how it is used. I agree with McWhorter because as someone who has been using modern slang, especially when texting, I have seen the way certain terms have changed in the way that we use them. For example, McWhorter explains how “LOL” no longer is used to necessarily mean “laugh out loud”. Instead it is used more as a way of “empathy and accommodation” (McWhorter). Personally, when I’m texting someone and I use “LOL” it's usually to sugar coat or soften whatever I just said. For example:
Friend: "Hey Liv how'd that test go that you've been studying for all week?"
Me: "Oh I failed that lol"
Now in actuality I probably did not fail the test (hopefully), but I’m not feeling too confident on how it went and I’m using “LOL” to soften the harsh statement of “I failed”.
The way I use “LOL” now is very different from how I first used it cerca 2012, and that's due to technology expediting its evolution by allowing me to see how other people are using it everyday.
Search Engines & Literacy
Another aspect to technology’s effect on literacy, is the way people use the internet to learn new things. For instance this article from The Atlantic, explains how having immediate access to search engines is essentially making people impatient and lazy. The article talks about how most people do not read like they used to, instead they simply skim works with a lot of writing and large paragraphs. I am guilty of doing this, and have no doubt that it is due to how I’ve grown up being able to find an answer to my questions in under a second by searching it on my computer or phone. It's made me very impatient and adopt the attention span of a goldfish. So this is a not so great effect technology has made on literacy… there’s that double edged sword analogy coming up again.
Another article by Buzzfeed talks about 9 facts about technology that made a lot of sense to me. For instance, they mention how “your brain misses its downtime”, and I can totally relate. After being on my computer and phone all day, by the time I’m ready to go to bed my head hurts and my eyes feel strained. My brain definitely is screaming at me to put the screens away. Another thing the article mentions in their 9 facts is that “there is no such thing as multitasking”. This actually shocked, and slightly insulted me as I pride myself as being an efficient multi-tasker. They explain though, that multitasking is not that efficient, and as you switch from task to task you're just losing focus. After reading this I could see how this happens when I try multitasking. Their other facts are very interesting and are definitely worth checking out! You’ll probably relate just as I did after reading how technology affects us!
Final Thoughts
There’s no doubt that technology has both advantages and disadvantages. I think we all should try to utilize its advantages, while being aware and cautious of the danger it poses to us in both our health and development. I think we’ll be focusing on the connection between technology and literacy for the rest of the semester because as technology continues to impact modern literacy, it will impact how rhetoric is composed and perceived, which of course is the focus of this class.
Thanks for reading!
Liv
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