Carrier Iq - the Psychological and Sociological Effects

Carrier IQ the psychological and sociological effects

Carrier IQ is a smartphone device that tracks activities that can impact individual's psychological and sociological behaviors. The smartphone can track activities that impact physical, social, and mental wellbeing namely sleep, physical activity, and social interactions. This device is programmed for monitoring and storing individual's information without their knowledge.

The impact that causes individuals is fear when they become aware of their personal information being recorded and stored. This device which is a direct cause of violation of privacy can present individuals with a wide range of health issues. Fear can cause individual lack of sleep, high blood pressure, stress, depression, anxiety, and social isolation. The program has the possibility to interfere with a range of behaviors in real time.

Computer technologies can be addictive because they're psychoactive, they alter mood and often trigger enjoyable feelings. A true addiction is a growing tolerance to a substance (drugs or alcohol) so you need more to get "high", uncomfortable symptoms during withdrawal, and an impact on your life. The psychoactive addictive behavior example is Email, which gives you satisfaction due to what psychologist call "variable ratio reinforcement." That is, we never know when we will get a satisfaction email, so we keep checking, over and over again. It's like an addictive behavior to slot machines where we are seeking that pleasure hit. Smartphones allows us to go to the inbox feeding through anytime and anywhere. The behavior is unhealthy because it's disrupting your work and family life. It's a compulsion behavior not to check your phone which can be dangerous especially while you're driving. The idea of this compulsive behavior and the awareness of their personal information being monitored can trigger unstable emotional behaviors. The addictive behavior of the phone beeps and alerts, causes the obsession of checking their phone for new emails (to satisfy the high), but the emotional behavior of wanting to be strong or disciplined not to answer can cause anxiety and stress. Stress is a silent killer which can cause and trigger other health issues and the added fact of not knowing why their information is being monitored by the carrier.