Introduction
Emerging mobile technologies and tools, while being robust instruments for various applications, can hurt individuals and societies. They are easily accessible via the smartphone, and even though everyone may use their benefits, it means that the scale of the problem is enormous. At first, emerging mobile technologies will be overviewed and analyzed, discussing their positive sides and mentioning their possible drawbacks. Then, each drawback and negative impact will be reviewed separately, such as the cases of mobile addiction, distraction, privacy concerns, and social problems. Then, negative and positive influences will be compared and analyzed, and possible solutions to those drawbacks will be proposed.
Emerging Mobile Technologies and Tools: An Overview
Emerging mobile technologies and applications are tools that may be used for various purposes on smartphones. Almost everyone smartphone owner may find a large amount of them in Google’s Play Market or Apple’s App Store, and more of them are present in third-party resources. Education is a vast field where many apps are present: some are designed for the classroom, while others are dedicated to self-education (Heflin et al., 2017). Healthcare tools are present in a large variety, too: from applications connected with sensors to monitor physiological parameters to services for training (S. Bhuyan et al., 2017). Business tools include organizers that allow to creation of notes and plans, office tools, and finance apps for online wallets and quick money transferring.
Apps for communication and entertainment compose another large part of mobile technologies. Games present the entertainment field, rapidly growing now and using new technologies, such as virtual reality, for the new experience (Jin, 2017). People play games to spend time, relax after work, or for educational purposes. Social media are actively used for communication, content sharing and creation, and spreading personal opinions, and it has become a part of life for many people (Hou et al., 2019). News services spread information about what happens in the world, enabling one to know it even while being in another country. Thus, mobile technologies are an essential part of the modern world, used in various fields. Education, business, healthcare, finances, entertainment, communication, and organizing are the most commonly used, but mobile applications are not limited by them.
Negative Impacts
While the positive impact of those emerging technologies has been discussed above, this paper is dedicated to the negative impact. It is important to understand this impact, as it may be avoided or resolved only by being adequately detected. Several types of negative influence may be specified: addictions, distractions, privacy concerns, and social problems such as cyberbullying and hate speeches. Each of them follows from the mass usage of emerging mobile technologies, and their development may worsen some of them, especially addictions. Most modern mobile games are already immersive and highly addictive, but with the development of virtual and augmented reality tools (VR/AR), those parameters will probably become higher (Liang et al., 2022). Another problem is distractions caused by a large amount of diverse and interesting online information: it exhausts attention and decreases the overall efficiency of all actions. Social problems, such as privacy issues, cyberbullying, and hate speeches, are consequences of mobile apps and Internet popularity, too.
Addictions
A large amount of information, amusing content on social media, and immersive mobile games are highly addictive. It is OK if people play mobile games, sometimes even for a long time, but it may become a huge problem when they cannot stop playing. It may worsen mental health, evoke many negative feelings, such as aggression and depression, and lead to a situation when one cannot live without the game.
Game addiction emerges when a person becomes tightly attached to some mobile or computer game. Mobile games are designed to draw attention with bright and vivid graphics, intuitive and engaging gameplay, and exciting plots. There are several criteria for game addiction proposed by APA based on the disorder’s roots and consequences; they enable the evaluation of how dangerous the addiction is (Jin, 2017). People who are addicted to mobile gaming are persistent in their actions, feel withdrawal symptoms when stopping playing, and have an increased number of social and psychical problems (Wang et al., 2019). VR/AR technologies will make mobile games even more immersive, as one will be able to fully dive into the experience rather than seeing it only on the smartphone’s screen (Liang et al., 2022). It will lead to more hours spent in games and, thus, increase the probability and strength of addiction.
Social addiction means that one spends long periods on social media, either communicating with others, usually unknown in physical life, or watching media content, primarily videos. In the case of online games, social and game addictions are combined. This type of addiction correlates with low self-esteem and mental vulnerability: it was shown that people who have problems coping with real-life challenges tend to spend more time online (Hou et al., 2019). Another danger of social addiction is that addicted people, having weaker minds are more vulnerable to cyberbullying and other harmful online experiences that may further break their mental health (Giumetti & Kowalski, 2022). Both social and game addictions are equally dangerous, and new technologies that make the mobile app experience more immersive are dangerous for people vulnerable to them.
The problem of addiction is significant and highly actual for the young population. Children love to play mobile games and watch diverse content on social media, being vulnerable to Internet addiction (Jin, 2017). Both types of addiction, game and social, are connected with the desire to escape reality and correlate with low self-esteem, weak self-control, and mental issues (Hou et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2019). Parental control apps may help limit the children’s play time, but their efficiency is limited, as children feel this control is oppressive (Badillo-Urquiola et al., 2019). Therefore, it is crucial to teach children concentration and self-control and ensure their mental health: it will substantially decrease the chance of becoming addicted.
Distractions and Decreased Efficiency
The Internet, mobile tools, and other information technology developments led to a situation when information is present in abundance. In addition, various mobile games are always present, creating vast possibilities to spend time. They distract attention, making it harder to concentrate on the problem, especially at work or the university (Heflin et al., 2017). The usage of mobile organizers and learning programs is usually connected with multitasking: it is tempting to learn several subjects at once or work on several points simultaneously. In addition, their usage enables them to work and study from home, communicating with teachers and work colleagues via the Internet, which is attractive, too. However, the active usage of mobile apps increases distraction which, subsequently, decreases the quality of work and study, even despite all benefits (Delello et al., 2020). The negative effect can be reduced by developing concentration skills (Van & Guinan, 2020). Thus, distraction poses a significant challenge for mobile app users, even though it can be quite easily mediated by improving the concentration and stability of attention.
Privacy Concerns
Mobile technologies use various data extensively, and sometimes those data may be endangered. For example, GPS applications, such as online maps, help reach destination points and explore the world in general. However, it opens access to the location data of the individual, which may be used to detect where the user is now against their will. Social media and dating apps, while helping in socialization, store a large amount of personal data, usually posted by the user voluntarily, such as photos (Bourlai et al., 2020). Healthcare mobile applications deal with sensitive data such as diagnoses and analysis results, and mHealth apps require robust security defense systems (S. Bhuyan et al., 2017). Therefore, while mobile applications are helpful in various life situations, privacy concerns form a significant drawback, as most of those apps require personal data for their performance.
Internet technologies and mobile apps make the world interconnected, but the consequence is the increased people’s vulnerability to anonymous malefactors. They may obtain people’s data by hacking, social engineering, or due to their incaution and then use it for blackmailing. As the number of private information on the Internet is enormous and increases with the usage of most mobile applications, one may see that the problem is severe. Blockchain technologies that encrypt data and enable no one except their owner to access and use them are one possible solution to this issue (Li et al., 2020). Critical thinking is necessary, too, as it helps one to decide what to do with personal data and not share it when it may be dangerous or a privacy breach is possible.
Cyberbullying
When one communicates via online services, they have the risk of being offended or threatened by malefactors. Those abusers maybe people they know in real life who want to express their negative feelings toward one or self-assert at their expense. However, it may also be anonymous people who love to offend others or try to threaten and blackmail them. Cyberbullying, especially from those who are known in real life, is connected with decreased well-being, mental issues, and even suicidal tendencies (Giumetti & Kowalski, 2022). This negative impact is similar to privacy concerns, but if the former is connected with technical issues, this one is psychological and social.
Hate Speeches and Other Internet Problems
This problem is connected with the previous one and may similarly be classified as a communication problem. While cyberbullying is a personal problem, that arises mainly in private messages, hate speeches are written as public posts. While freedom of speech is essential, calls for violence toward anyone violates this freedom. Popular social media sites, such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, ban such posts, but considering that there are hundreds of millions of active users there, it is impossible to monitor them (Chetty & Alathur, 2018). They differ in their scale and hate intensity: from ordinary people’s posts with fierce critics of some social group to open calls for violence toward some categories of people.
Aggressive propaganda, when political opponents are claimed to be inferior to those to whom the propaganda is dedicated, is another example. It is often accompanied by offensive language, direct abuses toward opponents, defamation, and trying to break their reputation (Castaño-Pulgarín et al., 2021). Mobile apps, such as news services and social media, are perfect tools for spreading such speeches, especially when a propagandist has political influence and money, which is usually the case. Some news services may be arranged toward some opinion and translate biased information; in addition, it is hard to check information due to the tremendous amount of it on the Internet.
Hate speeches make the world more dangerous, spreading fear, paranoia, and mistrust between people. People who write such posts aim to evoke negative feelings in people and then manipulate them to reach their own goals. It may be considered large-scale cyberbullying when a malefactor tries to frighten not a single person but the whole world or its part. Terrorists often use hate speeches to spread their radical ideas, showing them as the only true ones and convincing them that it is a good deed to die for them (Chetty & Alathur, 2018). Propagandists use them to deceive people and manipulate them for their benefit, and it is easy to be deceived when one is not used to checking all incoming information (Castaño-Pulgarín et al., 2021). Critical thinking is necessary to analyze everything one can find in social media and news apps and make rational decisions based on this information.
Discussion
Positive and Negative Impacts: A Comparison
Therefore, mobile technologies already have a profound negative impact on people and societies, and their development may further increase it. On the one hand, they facilitate education and communication, make leisure more immersive and exciting, and help businesses in their enterprises. On the other hand, they lead to addictions, distractions, privacy issues, and social problems. Positive and negative impacts both follow from the same roots: huge amounts of information, high speed of its transmission, and much vivid, immersive content. The abundance of information is valuable for learning but distracts attention and reduces efficiency. The ease of control, data sharing, and money transfer facilitates financial activity and communication but creates privacy concerns. The possibility to communicate online makes the world open and interconnected but exacerbates social contradictions, leading to hate speeches and conflicts. It is not the case to reject emerging mobile technologies: it would be a large step backward and much more harmful to humanity than the current situation. However, one should learn how the negative impact can be reduced and try to do it.
Decreasing Negative Impact
There are several ways to decrease the negative impacts of technologies: use other services and develop particular skills. Some issues may be solved by other services: for example, blockchain-based solutions increase data protection, ensuring that only the data owner may grant access to them (Li et al., 2020). Parental control apps, especially those where children have access to the app along with their parents, help to control mobile app addiction (Badillo-Urquiola et al., 2019). However, to be secure from negative impacts, specific skills should be developed: critical thinking and concentration are the most important of them. One should also improve their mental health and be sure that it is stable and will not be worsened by the mentioned influences.
Critical thinking is a specific ability that helps one to make the right decisions by analyzing positive and negative influences of something and then maximizing positive ones and minimizing negative ones. It is called high-order thinking: one thinks not about the objects but their interconnections and evaluates why they are connected in this way and which consequences they may have (Wang, 2017). Therefore, it allows one to see the world more broadly and clearly than by simply thinking about the objects present in it. Using it, one may analyze mobile apps’ positive and negative impacts and decide how to use them only for one’s benefit. In addition, by analyzing other skills, such as concentration, one may understand which of them are necessary to reduce the negative influence and learn them quickly.
The ability to concentrate is crucial, as it allows one to decrease distractions and organize their time more rationally. Concentration is the mastery of one’s attention: the ability to focus on one or several things without interruption and clearly understand why one does this (Van & Guinan, 2020). This help to solve at least two problems: addiction and distraction, as one has much less chance of becoming addicted if one can control their attention (Hou et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2019). Meditations, fitness, yoga, and special practices such as voluntary focusing on one object and trying to hold attention to it help to increase concentration and, in addition, improve mental health (Van & Guinan, 2020). Therefore, concentration is a vital skill in maintaining attention and mental stability, indispensable in the time of emerging mobile technologies and the Internet.
Mental health is essential, too: as one can see, people with mental issues are especially vulnerable to addictions, cyberbullying, and other problems related to the Internet and mobile apps. People with a stable and strong psyche are much less vulnerable to addictions, distractions, and social problems (Giumetti & Kowalski, 2022; Heflin et al., 2017). In addition, they are more rational, make better decisions, and learn crucial skills faster (Van & Guinan, 2020). In that way, one should ensure that they have no mental problems, and if there are any, find ways to cope with them and, preferably, visit a psychologist. To summarize, while the negative impacts of mobile technologies are very distinctive, they can be successfully mediated and decreased by improving mental health, concentration, and critical thinking skills.
Conclusion
The influence of emerging mobile technologies is mixed: they are extremely helpful, providing tools for studying, organizing information, and efficient leisure. However, drawbacks are considerable too, and one should never forget them to be sure that negative consequences will not influence them. They may quickly become addicted to vivid mobile game experiences or diverse content on social media. New virtual reality technologies will probably make those experiences more immersive, creating a much larger chance of becoming a mobile addict. Even if one can avoid addiction, it may cause distraction, and one should improve their concentration and critical thinking skills to cope with all those problems. In addition, a large amount of information in social media inevitably leads to privacy concerns that should be mediated by new encrypting technologies, such as blockchain. Cyberbullying, hate speeches, and aggressive propaganda are examples of social problems widely present in modern social media. One should improve critical thinking and mental stability to be sure that that issue will not affect them.
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