Stories From Experts About the Impact of Digital Life

Technology experts and scholars have never been at a loss for concerns about the current and future impact of the internet. Over the years of canvassings by Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center, many experts have been anxious about the way people’s online activities can undermine truth, foment distrust, jeopardize individuals’ well-being when it comes to physical and emotional health, enable trolls to weaken democracy and community, compromise human agency as algorithms become embedded in more activities, kill privacy, make institutions less secure, open up larger social divisions as digital divides widen, and wipe out untold numbers of decent-paying jobs. Many of these experts also wrote about a number of powerful ways digital life makes things better. Some themes:

The Positives of Digita Life: Glorious connectedness; Invent, reinvent, innovate (careers);  Life-saving advice and assistance; Efficient transactions
The Negatives of Digital Life: Connectedness overload; Trust tensions; Personal identity issues; Focus failures.