Impacts of digital technology on society

Digital technology changes how people live, work, learn, shop, communicate and are governed. Almost every change helps one group while causing problems for another, so impact is discussed by weighing both sides rather than calling a technology good or bad.

Five kinds of issue

Any technology can be examined through the same five lenses, and one technology often raises several at once.

Examples to have ready

• Smartphones and social media: instant contact across the world, but less face-to-face time.
• Online shopping and banking: convenient at any hour, while some shops and bank branches close.
• CCTV and facial recognition: helpful for solving crime, but they record people who have done nothing wrong.
• Electronic tracking: a courier firm plans tighter routes and gives customers accurate arrival times, while drivers may feel watched for a whole shift.
• Delivery drones: they cut van journeys and pollution, but film gardens as they fly over and take trade from local shops.

Who is affected

Always name the group and explain the effect on it: users and customers, the organisation running the technology, its employees, government and regulators, the people whose data is collected, who may never have chosen to use it, the wider public, and people in other countries. One change can benefit one group while harming another.

Building the discussion

Paper 1 has one 8-mark question on this topic, marked for the quality of your reasoning rather than one mark per fact. Take each area the question names in turn: make a point, explain its effect on a named group, then give the opposite side so both benefits and drawbacks appear. Finish with a conclusion that follows from your argument, such as accepting the technology only with a safeguard attached. Headings or a short table keep you organised, but tie every point to the scenario.

An ethical issue is a question of whether something is fair, right or wrong. It is not the same as a legal issue: something can be allowed by law and still be unfair or harmful. For example, a delivery company may be within the law when it fits its vans with trackers that time every stop, but many people would say it is wrong to watch drivers so closely that they feel unable to take a proper break. The law allows it, yet it still affects people's lives, so it is an ethical question.

Automation means using machines to do work that people used to do. A warehouse might install machines that sort parcels automatically. This can save the company money and speed up deliveries, but the people who used to sort parcels may lose their jobs. New jobs are created, such as engineers who maintain the machines, but they need different skills. The same workers cannot automatically move into them, so retraining matters. Automation therefore affects employees, employers and the wider economy in different ways.

Deciding who is responsible can also be hard when a technology makes a harmful decision. If a bank's automatic fraud check freezes a family's account by mistake and they cannot buy food, who is answerable: the programmer who wrote the rules, the bank that installed the system, the staff who set the risk level, or the company that supplied the software? The law may not yet say clearly, which makes it an ethical question: who should be answerable, and how can the harm be put right?

The working conditions of the people who mine materials and make devices are another ethical concern. A cheap phone may depend on low pay, long hours or unsafe conditions in another country. Buyers, manufacturers and governments all have choices about whether to accept this, which is why it is an ethical issue and not only an economic one.

A legal issue is a question about what the law allows or forbids. Digital technology creates new kinds of offence and lets older ones happen faster and on a larger scale, and the law often lags behind, because an Act is usually written only after a problem has appeared.

Legal issues include hacking and spreading malware, copying or sharing creative work or software without the rights to it, organisations gathering, trading or accidentally exposing personal details, and online fraud and harassment.

The three main laws

Match each action to the law it breaks.

The Data Protection Act 2018 controls how organisations collect, use, store and share personal data; its detailed rules have their own subtopic. It is the Act for mishandled personal data, not the Act about breaking into computer systems.

One incident can break several laws

Suppose someone finds a photographer's laptop still logged in, opens her photo library and copies wedding photographs to sell. Copying them breaks the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, because the work is used without permission; opening the laptop breaks the Computer Misuse Act 1990, because the access is unauthorised. If her clients' contact details were exposed too, the photographer, as the organisation holding that data, faces a personal data breach under the Data Protection Act 2018. Responsibility is split between the attacker and the photographer.

The internet crosses national borders, so something allowed in one country may be forbidden in another, and an offender based abroad is hard to prosecute because police in one country have limited power over someone living in another.

A cultural issue is a way in which technology alters how people and communities live, interact and treat each other — and the same change rarely affects every group in the same way. Unlike an ethical issue, which asks whether something is right or wrong, culture is about changes to a way of life that may suit some people and not others.

Keeping in contact

Social media, messaging and video calls let you stay close to people who live far away — a teenager whose grandparents emigrated can video call them every week. But hours spent messaging can replace time together in person, so a youth club may lose members because teenagers chat in a group instead of meeting up.

Where we shop and work

Online shopping and streaming have contributed to shops closing, such as a family-run bookshop or a shop that rented out films. That changes a town centre and takes away the jobs and the chance meetings that came with it. Remote working and video meetings mean a job can be done from a spare room rather than an office: a designer works from home instead of commuting, which suits their family, while the café that sold lunch to office staff loses trade.

News, devices and culture

Anyone can publish to a worldwide audience in seconds, so events are reported far faster than they used to be. That can be a boost — a teenager's video review of a small bakery brings in customers from the next town — but untrue claims spread just as quickly, and a made-up hygiene complaint can cost a takeaway its regulars. There is also pressure to own the newest phone so as not to be left out, and a generation gap between those who grew up with technology and those who did not, such as a grandparent who needs help paying for parking by app. Music, food and languages cross borders online far more easily than before, which spreads understanding, but if young people post only in a global language, a local language may be spoken by fewer people each year.

Environmental issues are the effects that technology has on the natural world. Digital technology affects the environment in three main ways: the energy it uses, the materials needed to make devices, and the waste created when equipment is thrown away.

Energy and raw materials

Every device needs electricity to run and to charge, and the data centres that store and send data use a great deal, because their servers must run and be kept cool. If that electricity is generated by burning coal or gas, it releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. Making devices also needs raw materials such as copper, gold and rare metals, which have to be mined and transported. Mining and transport use energy and water, and can damage habitats.

E-waste

When equipment is replaced, the old devices become e-waste. They contain metals that can be recovered and used again, so recycling saves resources, but e-waste that is not recycled safely can pollute soil and water.

Benefits

Technology can also reduce harm to the environment. Reading and sharing documents electronically instead of printing them uses less paper, so fewer trees are cut down, and an online meeting can replace a journey by car or plane. The overall effect depends on how the technology is used and on how its electricity is generated.

The digital divide is the gap between people who can reach technology and the internet and know how to use them, and people who are cut off from both. It is not only about being able to afford a device: someone who owns a tablet but cannot fill in an online form or spot a scam message is still on the wrong side of the gap.

What causes the gap

Cost is the most obvious cause. A laptop and a monthly broadband subscription are a regular expense, so a household on a low income may have neither, or may share one phone between several people.

• Location – what you can get depends on where you live. A block of flats may be wired for a single provider because of a deal made when it was built, so residents have no choice and pay more, while the next street can pick from three.
• Age – an older person may never have been taught to use a computer and may lack confidence, even when a device is sitting in the room.
• Disability – someone may need a screen reader, captions or a larger keyboard, and some websites are not built to work with those tools.
• Skills – using the internet well means more than tapping a screen. You need to keep passwords safe, judge whether a message is genuine and search for the information you actually want.

Why the gap matters

More and more services are moving online. Banking, applying for a job, booking a doctor's appointment and handing in homework may all assume that you have a connection and the confidence to use it. For example, three children in one household share a single phone to do their homework. Only one can use it at a time, so the other two fall behind through no fault of their own. People who are already disadvantaged are the most likely to be on the wrong side of the gap, so the divide makes existing inequalities worse: the people who would gain most from online services are the ones least able to reach them.

Privacy is a person's right to keep information about themselves private and to control who sees it. Digital technology makes it easy to collect and share such details, sometimes without the person knowing.

When you sign up for a website, install an app or simply carry a phone, details about you are gathered: your name, age, location, search history and the videos you watch. Organisations use this data for targeted advertising, showing adverts matched to what you already look at. They may also sell it on, or lose it in a data breach where it is stolen or published. A gym app that records when you visit, for example, holds personal data that could be sold or leaked.

Sharing on social media

Many people share details about themselves online without thinking about who can see them. Posts, photos and comments can be copied and shared by anyone who can view them, and once something is posted it can be very difficult to remove, because other people may already have saved it.

Surveillance and tracking

Surveillance means watching or recording what people do. CCTV, facial recognition and phone location data help police work out where someone was and what happened, so they can catch offenders. The same tools record the movements of people who have done nothing wrong, so security has to be balanced against privacy. A bus ticket scanner records which stop each passenger uses: it could help trace a missing person, but it also leaves a trail of ordinary journeys.

Smart devices and wearables

Smart devices in the home and wearables collect data about your home and your body. A thermostat that learns when rooms are in use, or a wristband that records your heart rate, sends readings to the manufacturer, which builds a detailed picture of your daily routine.

All of this raises ethical questions about how far employers, parents or governments should be allowed to track where someone goes, read their messages or check the websites they visit. Recording people in public still gathers information about innocent people, so privacy is not only an issue behind closed doors.

Everything you post, comment on or share online is online behaviour, and it raises ethical issues — questions about what is right or wrong, whether or not the law is broken.

Cyberbullying is repeated cruel behaviour towards someone online, such as a group chat where a classmate is mocked every day. It can make the target anxious and withdrawn, and it follows them home because messages arrive at any hour. Trolling is posting deliberately to provoke a reaction, for example winding people up in a gaming stream's chat. It upsets people and can turn into a pile-on. False information spreads quickly because anyone can post and share: a rumour that a local leisure centre is closing can be shared hundreds of times before it is corrected, worrying staff and costing bookings.

Anonymity means posting without your name attached. It can protect people: a young carer can speak openly on a support forum, because nobody at school can tell who wrote the posts. It can also let people avoid responsibility, because a nameless account can send threats and may not be held to account.

Health and wellbeing

Too much screen time can mean less physical activity, and scrolling late at night can cause sleep problems. Social media pressure — comparing yourself with edited photos and highlight reels — can lower mood. Together these can affect your concentration and how you feel.

These drawbacks have to be balanced against the benefits. Health apps can remind someone to take their medication, online medical advice can help you check whether a rash needs a doctor, and medical technology lets a scan taken at one hospital be shared with and reviewed by a specialist working somewhere else. The balance is different for different people: a 15-year-old may feel under pressure to keep up with friends on social media, while a 72-year-old may find a video call the simplest way to keep in touch with family living abroad.