The important aspect of living in the society and participating in culture is a form how members of a given society spend their leisure time. Leisure time is construed as a spare time free from everyday duties (school, work, household works), which is spent on resting and/or freely (or seemingly freely) chosen activities selected by an individual and carried out for fun or relaxation. A spare time in social science is also defined as such moments in one’s life, in which he or she has an opportunity to develop their own social competences, to form their personality in contacts with other people. To be precise, spare time is time in which socialization and inculturation of an individual can be carried out freely. Although it seems that it is us who organise spare time ourselves but actually a form of spending spare time is imposed, for example by prevailing trends, which are adopted by us unconsciously. Since the moment of fast development and popularisation of information technology, the common way of spending spare time has been subject to irretrievable change and gained a completely new dimension, and inevitably along with it the processes of socialization and inculturation gained a new dimension.
Traditional forms of spending free time on family and social meetings, practicing sport, participating in cultural events and developing any passions, have not disappeared. They are cultivated by many people, maybe even with more and more engagement and care. However, an enormous part of modern societies spend their leisure time in a completely different way on watching TV and surfing Internet: viewing thematic websites, audio and visual materials, playing multimedia games, using social networks, reading press and many others.
An essential part of a social life is of course also organisation of an everyday life basing on ordinary activities, such as: shopping, making various reservations, cooking and eating meals, paying for bills, handling with official businesses, remote studying, borrowing books, etc., etc. This situation is facilitating everyday life and a great comfort (obviously… only for people who have adequate competences to use these modern tools and services and only when there is not an unexpected breakdown of systems which serve these institutions). Numerous facilitations provide disabled persons with the opportunity for fast meeting everyday obligations (the blind – add photos of alternative communication devices), create possibility of participation in social life, contribute to overcome numerous barriers which have existed for many years.
On the one hand, it occurs to me that: “life and functioning of man without going out has become possible”, and afterwards a question comes up automatically: “if life and functioning of a man without going out could be possible?”
Hard to imagine life without computers?
There are people that have been doing without technology for generations.
Summary
The modern information technology, which is omnipresent in a human life carries along innumerable benefits, opens many opportunities, settings, solutions and methods enabling meeting planned life goals, which are set by us as individuals who strive for perfection and education all our lives and as individuals functioning in a given society.
Some negative effects resulting from popularization of the information technology, mainly television and Internet cannot be omitted, their considerable reflection can be noticed both in educational, social and cultural fields of modern man functioning. These negative phenomena cover new types of addiction – addiction to Internet, computer games, facilitation of criminal activity in the Internet – unauthorized access to accounts (burglary), sale of illegal goods and a threat of unconscious contact with a paedophile, which is most commonly experienced by the youngest.
Spending too much time in front of a computer can result in straining wrist muscles, pains of the bottom part of backbone and back, stiffness and tension of nape of the neck and shoulders, irritation of eye mucosal membrane, tiring of eyes, pains and giddiness. It can lead to spinal curvature and degeneration of joints, obesity as well as disorder of the central nervous system due to the stress which accompanies “fun” with a computer and interpersonal disorders consisting in loss of communication skills with the nearest surrounding and emotional problems and even personality deformation by triggering attitude of aggression, cruelty and violence by many games.
However, the presence of the computer games in a youth’s life should not be demonised. As there are situations when teenagers play sport or music games which trigger positive emotions, and they invite parents or peers for group playing. I have also encountered a view that computer games influence positively child’s eye-ear and motor coordination, shape abilities of perceiving complex media messages and increase concentration capability.
It is media that are commonly blamed for causing social problems, such as: looseness and remissness of social ties, phenomenon of anonymity and loss of individual’s identity resulting therefrom. However, I am not sure to what extent these media are a threat and to what extent they are an opportunity to use modern technologies to create a new society, new knowledge and culture. I would like to believe that we are not directed to self-destruction, but we need some more time to find ourselves fully in a new reality.
I think that when using the latest technologies one should always take into consideration both the positive and negative aspects. But balancing positive and negative aspects does not make sense here. Presence of technologies in our life is a fact and there is no retreat, regardless of the number of opportunities and threats. This situation constitutes a very difficult challenge for us consisting in finding harmony and acquiring competencies in functioning in this reality. Media education in a broad sense becomes a new and extremely important task faced by each educational institution. This education should not be based only on learning how to technically operate multimedia devices. Its important task is to shape attitude of responsibility for own activities when using modern technologies and awareness of threats so that not to frighten but to develop everyone’s ability to take actions which develop sense of security.
Now I can say that I have described a circle and returned in my considerations to the starting point. Activities within the scope of media education addressed at the youngest children and continued at each stage of their education will be effective provided that they are reflected both in cultural and social life.
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