It students’ awareness of the negative effects of technology

Abstract

The motivation for this study is that people often become victims of technology abuse and cybercrime and that they are not equipped to counteract the negative effects of technology. Many studies emphasize the benefits of using technology in our daily lives. Despite people’s increased use of technology, specifically information technology (IT), there are insufficient educational efforts made regarding informing users of the dark side of technology. The dark side of technology entails all the negative side-effects of technology, such as plagiarism, information security threats, technostress, etc. In this paper, some of the main negative impacts that technology can have, are addressed. IT students’ awareness regarding the negative effects of technology is assessed in this study. It was observed that some of these issues correlate with graduate attributes that need to be developed at university level. The study employed a survey where observations in a classroom and electronic questionnaires were used. The results indicated that the students lacked adequate knowledge regarding the dark side of technology. With this information in mind, a mobile app to educate users was developed, using the data extracted from the survey and the literature study. The fact that some students are not adequately educated about the dark side of technology can imply that there is a possibility that information technology users may become victims of cybercrimes, e.g. internet scams, or at the other hand become the perpetrators by misusing the technology intentionally or unknowingly. In educating the students regarding these matters and raising their awareness, graduate attributes, such as “responsible and engaged members of society” and others are addressed.