Social Impacts of IT

Technology nowadays affected a lot of people, for example:

Consumer Behaviour - It made their life easier because with modern technologies you don’t need to go to shops to buy something, you can do all shopping online. A lot of hacker started stealing money from people who used their credit cards unsafely. Games started to appear on the internet and lots of people started to spend their time playing games online.

The elderly and disabled - Elderly people no longer need to go outside shop to buy something. They can get everything delivered to their door and installed for them if needed. Technology has really improved for disable people such as ones who cannot walk stairs, so they now use stair lifts. Elderly people tend to have hearing problems so there are now lots of things to improve that. One of the best inventions for elderly people is the mobility scooter which now allows them to travel everywhere they need to.

Young People - More young people travelled to the city to get jobs. It make a lot easier and faster to communicate between each other and make new friends from long distance and keep in touch with old ones. They can listen music portably through their mp3 players which are very small. Even though communication has got a lot easier, big problem have occurred such as cyber bullying where young people are being harassed and some of them being led to suicides.

Consumer Trust & New Legislation - Technology has
- made purchasing more convenient without having to travel far.
- Gives consumers access to reviews and comments from previous customers.
- provides quicker checkout procedures.
- Provides improved inventory control to keep merchants well stocked
- allows consumers to become better informed through comparison of sources and prices.

Business organisations - All their documents are on the servers or on hard drives and it is very easy for them to find any document. Nowadays it is impossible to have your own business without new technologies. It doesn't necessarily mean that through technology you can have any business you want and it will be successful. For example a local bookshop will not be as successful if they open their own website as gaming industry or music industry would be. Gaming and music industry's are getting a huge profit for selling products online so its better for the provider, because they get a lot more money and its better for consumers because they can order it all from their home.

Social Impacts -



The personal computer was developed on 80’s and only few rich organisations had them. Over the years having a computer was not such a hard thing and nowadays every office has a computer all over the world and it changed many people’s jobs.

This has affected a lot of employment areas such as:

·         Factories – all factories are now machine operated and people no longer needed there to build things

·         Office work – offices used to employ a lot of secretaries to produce a lot of document work, now people can type and print their own documents.

·         Accounting – long ago companies used to employ a lot of people to do the calculations, now a single computer with a spreadsheet can do everything but faster.

·         Newspaper printing – before technology it took highly skilled printers to type a page, now everything can be done a lot faster and better using computers.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that once technology has taken over the world, there has been less jobs around. Once it happen even more jobs appeared such as:

·         IT Technicians – the ones who maintain the hardware of the computers and fix every parts of it once needed.

·         Computer Programmers – all of the software used by companies had to be created by computer programmers.

How does it affect our lives?



Looking at the devices I mentioned above, living without them would be very hard and very awkward as we all are used to them and do not image our lives without them.

When people used to wash clothes using their hands, microprocessor controlled devices do that kind of stuff for us and gives us more time to relax.

We are now able to communicate with people using computers, mobile phones etc. We can as well become part of social networks.

Once online shopping appeared we have got more choice of what we want to buy and it saves us time. It is great for those who are unable to leave houses.

Business - Once internet appeared, economic changed dramatically. You no longer need to go to a shop to buy a game, you can just order it online without stepping out the door. So it affected most of the shops, but if someone is selling some sort of food in a shop, it won’t help them to have their website to sell it. Instead of buying a CD of a movie or music, you can just order it online or watch it online for free. You can pretty much order anything from internet.

Economic Impacts -

Once internet appeared, economic changed dramatically. You no longer need to go to a shop to buy a game, you can just order it online without stepping out the door. So it affected most of the shops, but if someone is selling some sort of food in a shop, it won’t help them to have their website to sell it.

Legal Impacts -

Taking credit for other peoples work on internet has become a very serious problem tho there a laws and people are dealt with who do that. For example you cannot use someones picture or text work and address it as yours, as long as you acknowledge it, you’re safe.

Ethical Impacts -

In today’s technology, almost everything you do is recorded and kept somewhere safe online. Although all around the world there are various of hackers who are trying to access all the secret information by breaking the law.

Digital Divide -

The digital divide is the divide and comparison between poor countries and rich countries with technology. Richer countries such as UK will have better advantage in probably everything than Africa or any other poor countries. In last 40 or so years technology has taken place in:

·Personal Computers

·Mobile Phones

·The Internet

·Medical scanners

·Satellites

·Lasers

·CD and DVD

·Television

·Car electronics

·Credit cards

Although the place we live in now is all technologised and you don’t need to worry about it, some poor countries have still big issues that do not allow them to access full technology we have today.