New technologies play an increasingly important role in our daily lives.

So important
that it has reached a point in which we, humans, are controlled everywhere and our
privacy is not as private as we think it is. But are we aware of all this?
Hello everyone, I am Núria Capdevila and I want to talk to you about the use of new
technologies and the consequences they involve.
First of all, do you know why mobile phones, or rather applications we use, create
addiction? Well, we are increasingly addicted to dopamine, or also known as the
hormone of happiness, as it makes an experience enjoyable for us. People need to know
constantly what is going on around them, and receiving an Instagram like, for example,
is a fact that has an impact on the brain in such a way that this organ produces a
dopamine discharge that satisfies us and therefore pushes us to constantly look at our
phone or to be addicted on a social network.
All this that happens so in adults, teenagers, or young children, does not happen by
chance but is done on purpose. That is, there is someone behind it who has thought
about it. So there is a need to create technology products that make us as addicted as
possible. As you well know we don’t need to pay for using Instagram, Twitter, Google,
or Whatsapp, like many other apps. But why is that? Do the companies that create these
platforms work for hours and hours and get nothing in return? Well, of course not. What
is bought and sold on Whatsapp, Instagram, or Twitter, for example, is our attention, so
these companies make more money the longer they can keep us addicted to their
platforms.
Besides, these companies not only manage to get us addicted as users, but they also get
a lot of our personal information. When we double tap and like, we give our personal
information, addresses, phone numbers, sexual orientation, bank details, places we’ve
been, personal tastes, and much more. Even if you sometimes have a conversation with
someone about a trip you want to take or something you want to buy, you’ll see ads on
Google or Instagram related to what you’ve been talking about.
Now, I want to ask you, have you ever heard about Big Data? Big Data, allows the
processing of billions of data. This can be very useful in research on coronavirus or the
diagnosis of cancer, but also presents many risks related to privacy. The moment you
start using an app, you agree to lose absolute control of your privacy. You need to be
aware that an application that offers you a free service is carrying out market research to
find out what are you doing, where, with who or what you like in order to sell all this
data to advertising companies. Therefore, users, we are not the customer, users we are
the product.
I want to end this speech by recommending you 2 documentaries, available on TV3,
which I find very interesting. The first is called “Everything we know about you” and
the second one, “Big Data”. I encourage you to watch them if you are interested in the
social control that technology has over us.
Thank you.
Glossary:
Social network: xarxa social
Dopamine: dopamina
Company: empresa
Double tap: doble toc, doble clic
Absolute control: control total
Market research: Estudi de mercat
Advertising: publicitat
Costumer: client
Application or app: aplicació o app
Big Data: Dades massives o Big Data