New Media changes our lifestyle

Have you ever noticed that for the last 10-15 years, the number of the electronic devises in our life increased  significantly? Laptops became lighter, cell phones more powerful and functional, eReaders entered the digital market and so on. And even more, it doesn’t just exist in our life,  it’s completely changing it! Especially with the introduction of iPad and other digital tablets, it became even more interesting. Now we can truly say that we are living in the 21^st century.

Can anybody in 1990’s imagine that ordinary phone could deal with such complicated functions as  creating and editing documents, sending emails, formatting videos and photos, etc. as normal computer or laptop?  Of course this type of phone today is called  a smartphone, but still its main function is the ability to call other people. And all other functions are nice bonus, which we receive by buying it.

Our society is dictating us this need. The influence of the Internet and Media sources tells that we should follow it everywhere and every time.  That’s why the number of consumers who is looking for ordinal cell phone just for making calls is decreasing. 

Thus we don’t use gadgets just for their basic functions. Today we are demanding for much more! We want to be a part of global Media system. Let’s have a look on total numbers of users of different social media platforms.

Isn’t it impressing? So many people, so many users, and all this became possible just with the technological progress, developing of  the Internet and the growing desire of people to be part of this community.

Everyday we follow news via Facebook, Twitter and Google. Even more, today it is possible not to have a phone number of the person, just be friends on Facebook, and still be in touch with this person 24 hours 7 days per week. Looking back at the history, we may remember the importance of ordinary post letters, which were delivered for a weeks or months. If we want to know something new, or just quickly fresh up any fact or information, then we just open Wikipedia. How many of you still looking for information in the encyclopedias? I wonder that the last time you opened it were few years ago. Also all this Media platforms give us possibility to have our own input in the complicated system of New Media. Now any person can share thoughts on any valuable topic, create a video or even movie and spread it all over the world. New Media gave us a huge field for human creativity. There are almost no borders for it. People are sharing, criticizing, arguing and therefore developing brand new concepts using collective intelligence.   

How about changes in kid’s preferences under New Media changes? For children it became even more important to have very technological device.

"According to the new data from The Nielsen Company, the iPad is the most desired electronic gadget this season. 44% of the children surveyed are interested in buying (read: receiving as a gift) an iPad in the next six months, 30% want an iPod touch and 27% want an iPhone. Those figures are on a par with last year’s numbers. In 2010 31% of kids aged 6-12 wanted an iPad, 29% wanted a computer, 29% wanted an iPod touch and 25% wanted a Nintendo DS/DSi/DS Lite. The story changes a bit for kids over 13, but the iPad still sits at the top of gadget wish lists. 24% of teenagers older than 13 are interested in buying an iPad during the next 6 months, 18% want to buy a computer and 18% want to buy an eReader. Nielsen’s survey was conducted during October 2011 and involved 3,000 participants." 

The most valued part of this movement is that iPad can be used not just for playing games, as it was before with computers. Now there are dozens of special developing applications, different drawing and learning programs build exactly for kids. And some scientific studies do show that if the use of iPad or similar gadget wouldn’t be over limit it will improve and help in children’s development. Maybe in near future we will face the fact that schools will be provided with the iPad instead of computers.

So, there are a lot of visible changes in our lifestyle because of New Media development. Someone may argue that is just good ones, someone may think otherwise. But we all agree on the fact that it do change our world. But there are few things that can’t be replaced by new technology, for example this one. 

Daria Levchenko