6TH ARTEFACT EVALUATION:

The sixth artefact that I have completed is an interview with a man who is a retired home.

I wanted to find out the take of the older generation on the Internet and its effects on community spirit and community activity. I found an article in the Nottingham Evening Post that covered the story of young GCSE teenagers who attend a retired home to teach the residents how to use the internet.

This was a perfect scope for me, as it combined the older and younger generations using the internet for common ground and almost bringing my research in conclusive end.

I decided to first question the subject on his Internet use and what positives he had drawn from the Internet. He explained that he enjoyed the knowledge he could access as he loves to read and research subjects. The internet had made this a lot easier and accessible for him. I asked him if he uses the internet for communication purposes and socially and he described that he preferred to use more traditional methods to communicate as it felt more personal to him. The idea of chat rooms and forums did not appeal to him.

I moved on to questions about the internets negative effects and how this has related to society. He re-alliterated the point that he thought there was too much un-censored information available especially for young people and that this could have negative effects on behaviour etc. He also noted the amount of young people who now stay “inside on computers” rather than exploring the out doors and this, he thinks, has had down-ward effect on social behaviour. He thinks that the younger generation have fewer interests in today’s society compared to when he was younger.

He expressed his worry at the lack of social interaction within the community compared to when he was young, when community interaction was ripe and a lot more important. However we did both agree that this is due to many reasons, over-population, new migrant communities etc – but the internet and its technologies do play its part in it.

I was interested by his take on things and asked him if he could see a bigger distance between younger and older generations in recent times compared to in his day as a youngster. He said he has noticed a much bigger divide and we discussed the possible reasons and one was the internet or computer technology divide. He thought that younger people brought up on technology were more distant to the older generations who were not. I found this ironic especially because he was being taught by younger children how to use the Internet.

It appears that internally and online the internet may cause negative effects but in this case it has brought a generation and social divide together in the real world. A strange outcome.