my extremely rough essay draft (HW 18)

It is almost impossible for a person to live their life without using some form of a digital representation device. Our lifestyles revolve around the digital devices available to us. We rely on digital devices and enormous amount to connect with others, for pleasure, for work, and almost everything we do. This digital lifestyle has provided us with easier access to information then ever before. We can research virtually anything we want. The ability to learn and gain a great amount of knowledge is at our disposal. Yet, it is quite clear that each generation is even more ignorant than the previous one. Many people blame our ignorance on all the electronics and digital representation devices around us. Although digital representation devices consume an enormous amount of the average Americans life it is not the cause of our mass ignorance as a people and overall societal failure. The ideas in this country that are pushed through pop culture and the digital media are ideas that teach us to only value ourselves and to go about life in the easiest most convenient way possible. This has proved to be a recipe for disaster. The dominant ideas of our society, which are selfishness, a false sense of happiness, and individualism, are what our society revolves around. These are the ideas that people have been taught to believe in and they have shown to be ideas that lead to failure. With massive amounts of information at our fingertips the overwhelming majority of people choose to spend their time interested in meaningless things such as the lives of celebrities and Facebook. We have all the tools to get rid of the great amount of ignorance people have as whole yet we choose not to. Digital representation devices have given our society less of an excuse for its substantial amount of ignorance as well as the societal failure we currently face.
Pop culture is what our society revolves around. The priorities of people today have been completely disordered. It is very easy to blame an individual for their desire to follow pop culture and have it as their main priority whether it is consciously or sub-consciously. It is equally very simple for someone to blame it on new advances in digital technology. The true problem and explanation for the significant amount of ignorance in people today, lies within the dominant ideas of society. Through digital representation devices the ideas of pop culture are spread. We are taught to value ourselves and only things that affect us or the ones we love directly. We are taught how to be happy, we are taught how to be successful, and we are told to try our best and work towards fulfilling these false ideas of success and happiness. We are told to be different and unique but at the same time we are told how to live our lives. We are taught to conform to lifestyles that force us and keep us ignorant. We are taught to value meaningless and pointless things and in turn we are distracted from the significant and important things that truly affect the lives our lives, the lives of other, and the earth we live on. Facebook has been a widely used social net working site that people go on to connect with friends. It is not uncommon for someone to go on Facebook for hours; we have accepted this because in pop culture and our society today things such as Facebook are what we have as a top priority. Facebook has “over 300 Million users”, and “50 percent of our active users log on to Facebook on any given day”, finally “800 billion minutes are spent on Facebook daily (worldwide).” It is quite obvious that Facebook is one of the major distractions, and similar to everything else it will eventually die off and something new will come and replace it, and the people will spend there time distracted on this new meaningless website. This not only shows the amount of people who spend their time on pointless activities it shows why each generation is even more ignorant than the previous one. The statistics on the usage of Facebook also show us how pop culture and the value of fake happiness are ideas that have been a round for a long time and are pushed through society. These ideas affect young children, teenager, and adults; “The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older.” These ideas have been constantly taught to people of all ages. In the last 15 years there has been a great leap in the amount digital representation devices available to us as well as the capability of them. The fact that the largest growing demographic of Facebook users are over 35 show that it is not the tools or devices we have but it is what we are taught to use them for.
Digital representation devices do not change our priorities or the basis of our thinking they simply give us different ways to go about our lives, although we may be, essentially doing the same thing we did prior to them. Digital representation devices are ways of people conforming to pop culture. The reasons for our societal failures and mass ignorance lie within the ideas conveyed by pop culture. One of the main priorities of people today is fitting in with whatever is new or cool at the moment. Pop culture is what people follow to feel as though they are fitting in. The majority of people conform to the ideas of individualism and selfishness. People find it easier too go about interested in things that are meaningless and pointless instead of figuring out and learning about many significant problems we currently face, such as the war, economic problems, etc. It is much more convenient to see look at something new that a celebrity wrote on twitter than to do research and learn about current events a spend time thinking about the significant problems that affect our world. Twitter is a social networking website in which small message called “tweets” are displayed for everyone too see. These are usually short message saying what you are currently doing. Mostly this website is used for people to follow the lives of celebrities. Although the number is not as big as Facebook it is still excessively large at 1 million active users.(Michael Arrington, http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/29/end-of-speculation-the-real-twitter-usage-numbers/) People want feel much more comfortable looking at things that have no real significance and the dominant ideas of society have taught us to do things the easiest way possible. The over whelming numbers of people using these purposeless although amusing websites show that people simply do not want to learn and face the real problems in our world. No matter what site people are being distracted by and wasting their time on nothing will change unless the ideas of what is most important and the priorities of society change. The dominant ideas of society are what determine how people live their lives; a change in these ideas is the only thing that change peoples lifestyles.
Many people argue that the ignorance of society is caused by our lack of reading and our abuse of digital representation devices. The new generations are more ignorant than previous generations because of the advancement and overwhelming use of digital representation devices in the average person’s lifestyle. This is an argument that makes sense to many people and is a very standard argument. It is easy for people to blame problems on something that is right in front of them. However, this reasoning is wrong. The fact that the age range of the highest users of twitter are around 54 years old, and the highest growing demographic of Facebook users are 35 years and older, shows that it is not that new digital technology has caused more ignorance and an overall societal failure but it is the ideas that cause this. Digital representation devices provide another distraction for people. People can use things such as the internet to either expand their knowledge or spend time on pointless things such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
Although many people have not realized the immense amount of ignorance amongst people today and possibly their own ignorance it is something that affects all people. It is essential that people change their ways, because nothing good can come from an increasing amount of ignorance. Our lack of knowledge on the issues in the world today keeps us from ever making any significant changes. It is impossible to make change if you do not have a deep knowledge of what you are trying to change. We do not live in a perfect world; our world is very far from perfect. It is essential to make changes to better the world for ourselves and the future generations. Being aware of what causes our lifestyles and ignorance is a step towards figuring out how to better our selves and the things around us. The only way to counter and diminish the mass ignorance of our society is to change the ideas our society teaches people to believe in.