The Impact of Modern Technology on Young People - Essay Example

The proliferation of the Internet and online growth has facilitated novel societal trends and business opportunities through the piecemeal evolution of electronic commerce, thereby creating a new social and business model accommodating the contemporary market and thereby redefining youth culture. The creation of multi-faceted digital space has seen a significant uptake by youth on a global scale, thereby perpetuating a domino effect on culture, sub-cultures, and social behavior through the “commercialization of youth” on the one side to changing communication trends with social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo on the other (Cross, 2004: 3).

Moreover, this directly correlates with the fact that 70-90% of teenagers have access to the Internet at home and the commercialization of youth has led to market segmentation and a changing consumer market, forcing retailers to adopt a multi-retailer strategy geared towards the youth market (Levy & Weitz, 2008: 27).

This has in turn created polarity in the debate relating to the wider impact on the youth of modern technology, which is the focus of this paper. For example, the diversity of social spaces through networks such as Facebook, internet chat rooms, and MySpace for example not only changes the way in which teenagers interact, it provides a backdrop for a multitude of complex interrelated factors, which are difficult to monitor (Barabasi, 2003: 10).

On the one side of the spectrum is the issue regarding the commercialization of youth through modern technology with its concurrent impact on multi-retail strategy. This is further highlighted by the increasing influence of media on youth through the deregulation of the media. The Communications Act 2003 deregulates the media in the UK to permit more cross-ownership models and integration and under the Act, the Office of Communication (OFCOM) is an amalgamation of the five existing regulators, namely the Independent Television Commission, Broadcasting Standards Commission, Radio Authority, Communications Agency, and the Telephony Regulator OFTEL.