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Hello, I'm Luke and welcome to my podcast for learners of English all around the world.
This episode is called Technology in Everyday Life, The Choices We Make, Topic Discussion and Vocabulary.
And this episode is all about the choices we have to make relating to technology in our everyday lives.
lives. It will include loads of vocabulary and will give you the chance not only to listen to me talking about this, but also to practice your speaking on this subject too.
Technology is a hugely dominant force in our lives today.
More than at any other point in human history, we rely on it for almost everything.
Just think about how often you reach for your phone every day.
Consider how many of the things we do depend on an internet connection or even just electricity.
Our phones have become our constant companions.
We live in a world where everything is connected and everything is at our fingertips.
Meanwhile, AI is rapidly emerging as the most powerful technology since the invention of the combustion engine and is set to bring profound changes.
All of this has brought us incredible benefits, but at what cost?
every interaction we have with technology involves a series of choices we constantly have to weigh up the advantages against the personal social and environmental costs of using all the various forms of tech which have found their way into our everyday lives this is a crucial topic and one which comes into our conversations all the time these days so with this episode I want to give you the tools to have these conversations in English.
So coming up in this episode I have a list of discussion questions relating to different aspects of technology in our everyday lives.
These are questions I've used in class with my students for discussion practice and also for vocabulary work and now I'm converting that into a podcast episode.
You can use these questions too.
You can just say your answers out loud, either with a speaking partner or on your own.
They are talking points which you can use to practice your speaking on this subject.
You can find them all listed on the PDF for this episode.
There's a link in the description.
There's a link in the description, right, for the PDF.
and yes that pdf has all the notes from this episode including discussion questions vocabulary lists and also a full transcript this episode also has full english subtitles on youtube so you can switch them on if you want to read at the same time as watching this if you're listening to this in a podcast app as i said you'll find the full transcript link in the description so i'll demonstrate how you can use these questions for speaking practice on this topic.
And after listening to this, use the questions to do the same thing yourself.
Notice the vocabulary that I'm using and use it yourself while you practice your speaking skills.
This episode is listening practice, but also a chance to spot different bits of vocabulary which you can use later.
There'll be words and expressions on all the main topics relating to how we use technology in our daily lives and I'm talking about issues such as these privacy versus convenience data sharing digital detox online behavior digital legacy tech addiction tech for children information quality digital sustainability AI and automation security practices surveillance and privacy privacy tech company ethics and tech and well -being so what do you think would you be able to discuss these things fully in english do you know about the various issues connected to these things and do you know all the relevant
words that you would need to use when having a conversation on any of those subjects well that's what this episode will help you with now i'm going to answer these questions as a lay person and i should probably explain what a lay person means means, a layperson not as an expert.
So we use the word layperson when we're talking about science or maybe other areas of expertise like the law, technology in this case.
A layperson is just a normal person, not an expert, okay?
So sometimes we use the word layman in layman's terms, but also we can say layperson.
And it just means someone who doesn't have expert knowledge in the field so for example if you're talking about the law if you're talking about legal issues you've got you could have legal specialists lawyers who have special knowledge about a certain subject and then you've got the lay person or the layman and that would be just someone who doesn't really have special inside knowledge on the subject and so it's just kind of like talking in general terms it's the same thing applies to science you can talk about scientific subjects in that kind of specialist scientific way or you can talk about things
in in a more general way that everyone could understand, even if you don't have specialist knowledge.
So that would be in layman's terms or talking as a lay person.
So that's what I'm going to be doing during this episode.
I'll be answering those questions, talking about them as a lay person, not someone with expert knowledge.
And I'm assuming that you would be discussing these issues from that same position, too, unless, of course, you are an expert.
But I'm assuming that most of you listening to this are not sort of a tech expert but you are someone who obviously lives with technology and lives with all of the effects of it and all of the complex choices that relate to the way we use it right but anyway um please don't expect to get the expert answers to these questions in many cases there is no perfect answer in fact but really this is all more a question of how we describe and discuss technology today and how it influences our lives as ordinary people.
Just before we begin, I need to remind myself to set a 30 -minute timer to make sure I stop for some water, so let me do that right now.
That timer has started.
Also, I want to remember to make notes of vocabulary on a separate document during the episode, because no doubt bits of vocab will come up uh during this episode and i would like to remember to make a note of that vocabulary on a different document i've already started in fact and here in my notes i've got some bits of vocab which i've already used in fact so we have uh vocab uh vocab like uh technology is a hugely dominant force it's dominant it dominates our lives we rely on it for almost everything meaning we need it we are reliant on it we rely on it means you know we we need it for various
different things consider how many of the things we do depend on an internet connection so we depend on it we rely on it we need it these are all synonyms everything is at our fingertips if something is at your fingertips it's it just means that it's it's right there available to you easily and immediately in this you know with our phones of course literally things are at our fingertips because all you need to do is go on your phone open up your internet browser and literally things are at your fingertips so that's just an expression that means things are close and near to you and available to
you instantly AI is rapidly emerging as the most powerful technology blah blah blah rapidly emerging if something emerges it means it arrives it becomes real becomes visible okay it becomes obvious and AI is emerging meaning it's coming out as or revealing itself to be very powerful it's rapidly emerging just means it's it's arriving very very quickly.
We constantly have to weigh up the advantages against the costs to weigh something up.
You can imagine one of those old -fashioned systems of measuring, let's say, ingredients for making food.
You would use scales to weigh something, to measure the weight of it.
And we weigh things up.
It just means that we kind of measure the weight in comparison to each other.
so if you put the costs on one side of the scale and the benefits on the other side of the scale we then weigh up those two things and see which one is greater than the other one right measure their weight in comparison to each other or basically see the importance the relative importance of those things we have to weigh up the advantages against the costs this is a crucial topic.
Crucial meaning very important and yes I'm going to answer these questions as a lay person not as an expert and I've already explained that.
So I'm going to try and keep this list of vocab going.
There will be other bits of vocab in the document but anyway let's continue.
I'll be putting a big list a big vocab list at the end of the pdf for this.
Right so let's start with the first topic here which is privacy versus convenience and i should probably highlight the pronunciation of the word privacy so in british english and i'm from the uk so i speak british english we pronounce it privacy whereas in american english it would be pronounced privacy which i kind of understand because the the other word the adjective is private right something is private or public right private is how the adjective is pronounced and so it makes a bit more sense to to pronounce the noun as privacy but nevertheless in British English we pronounce the noun as
privacy and the adjective privacy so anyway privacy versus convenience so again weighing up these things in today's hyper -connected world we constantly weigh the benefits of convenience against the risks to our privacy so weighing up the benefits of the convenience of being able to use for example so many different apps on our phones against the risks of that to our privacy right so we're talking about data really signing up for apps smart home devices like like your Amazon Alexa, your smart speaker, signing up for these things or signing up for loyalty programs online often means handing over
personal data. This data might improve our experience, making services faster, more personalised or even cheaper, but it also exposes us to risks like data misuse, targeted advertising and even identity theft. Targeted advertising is i'm probably the least serious of all these things it's not that bad but nevertheless whenever we sign up for some thing you know whether it's an app or some service often the trade that we make is that we allow that service to access so much of our data and this includes well many things like for example if you are if you're signing up to a smart speaker now obviously
you can talk to to that smart speaker and uh it will you know help you do things like browse the internet or or play music or listen to the radio or podcast or something but often there will be small print terms and conditions which when you read them make you realize that actually okay so you're also allowing that smart speaker to collect a lot of information on you maybe even listen in on your your conversations and collect that data which it's supposed is supposed they say it's being used to provide a service to you but let's be honest a lot of the time what these companies are doing is they're taking
as much information about you as they possibly can not just to provide you with a good service but also so they can package that information and sell it off to So third parties, perhaps so that they can target advertising at you more effectively, but maybe for all sorts of other things that we're not completely aware of.
So the question is, how much privacy are we willing to sacrifice for convenience?
And the questions then to discuss, do you always accept cookies when browsing websites?
Do you always read the terms and conditions before clicking I accept?
accept and are there any apps or services which you don't use or don't like because you're concerned about how they use your data all right pretty big questions um so if i just answer these questions myself as a quote -unquote normal person um this is the sort of thing that you can do too so i would like you to try and answer those questions yourselves but anyway this is how i would answer those things so do I always accept cookies when browsing websites well this is the this is the thing isn't it this is a great example of how often it is a question of convenience sometimes when you go on the internet
you know um I don't know if it's the same everywhere in the world but certainly in Europe where I live you have to you know websites are obliged to make you choose to accept or not accept cookies cookies i don't know if this is the same word that's used in every language cookies are little files which are saved on your computer through your internet browser and they kind of work in two ways so the file helps you as a user of a website for example to uh it it saves certain information about the way you've browsed on that website which can be convenient it can help you to it remembers certain preferences
that you might have it remembers certain things you've done on that website so that you can easily for example stay signed in um you know whenever you go to a website you sign in you can stay signed in because the cookie remembers who you are remembers what your information was so you don't need to sign in in again every time but also on the other hand it allows that website or that service to remember to gain certain bits of information about you too.
I'm not entirely sure what that information is it could be limited to for example your browsing your browsing preferences what you've done what you've clicked on and what you've done for example if you go on a shopping website and you look at certain products the cookies will help that website remember the things that you looked at which presumably it will then use to try and send you targeted advertising but there could be a lot more it could be they could be gathering a lot more information and saving it than just that so that's basically what cookies do now personally i don't really want all
of these websites to to remember everything about me and to have access to all of my information.
When I go to a website for the first time, I'm given the option to accept cookies or reject them or manage my cookie preferences.
And when you actually manage them, you realise the amount of information you're giving away to a website.
But the problem is that, of course, you go to a website, you just want to do something quickly.
And so, naturally, most of the time, I expect most of us click accept all just to get that thing out of the way so that we can then start using the website to do whatever we were doing, right?
I do try to block as many of the cookies as I can.
But it's annoying because sometimes you have to go in and manage and uncheck various boxes, select different things before you you can continue it's rare that websites just give you the option to reject all cookies but if i am given that option that is what i do but it's often really annoying and inconvenient and a lot of the time i'll just whatever accept all not really wanting to but i'll do it but that's just a small example of how we do have to make this trade -off between you know privacy and convenience what about you do you always accept cookies when browsing websites or do you you know
choose the less convenient route of having to manage your preferences.
Do you always read the terms and conditions before clicking I accept?
I mean, I'd be surprised if anyone really read all of those terms and conditions.
Like whenever you sign up to a new service, there are pages and pages of legal terms and conditions.
Normally, we just scroll through them, don't we?
and just like whatever, except all, yeah, I'm sure it's fine.
But we don't know really what we're signing up for.
And are there any apps or services which you don't use or don't like because you're concerned about how they use your data?
Loads of them. I mean, you know, all sorts of services.
I'm concerned about how all of them do.
But of course, there are controversial issues relating to this, even political issues.
Like, for example, we think about the app TikTok, and there have been all sorts of things about that.
And it's quite controversial, because if I talk about this on my podcast, I've got lots of listeners in different countries where, I don't know, you might feel it's unfair for me to talk about TikTok as a website, as an app that I don't want on my phone, because of the way that it's going to collect my data and what where that data is going to end up who's going to get that information and who's going to benefit from it when pretty much any app any social media app that i have on my phone will be doing the same thing collecting my data and using it not just to advertise to me but for whatever
reason and we're talking now about kind of global even military purposes one day um i mean it's insane really when you think about what what companies and possibly governments can do when they have access to your device if you are if you allow them to if you allow them to they could access not just all the information saved on it the stuff that you've the websites you've looked at but also all your emails all your messages and the microphone in your camera and the microphone in your phone and the camera in your phone that is possible it's definitely possible I don't know to what extent it's actually
done but it certainly is possible that if you can imagine Imagine a scenario where we're in a war, a global war, and one side and the other side, you know, they're finding every way that they possibly can to win the war.
A lot of the time that is a question of gathering information in any way that they possibly can for their advantage.
If they could access somehow, if they had some access point to your device in your home, in your hand, that could be a huge strategic advantage.
advantage. Not only that, there's also the fact that if you are using a certain app on your phone regularly, that could be a source of sort of information control as well.
I mean, it's huge. And I'm not saying this one side or the other.
I'm sure that every successful social media app has this potential within it.
So, you know, all apps, really, I'm concerned about.
It's hard to judge, you know, between them all.
It's terrifying even to think about these things.
But I think that this is a realistic concern, which is why some countries have banned certain social media apps, You know, because it becomes a kind of a potential threat for various reasons.
Hello, I just want to come in here and add the first of several interruptions that I'm going to make during this episode.
This one right now is going to be about a case study of TikTok and data concerns.
And I wanted to just sort of expand on this.
First of all, I do want to be fair and say that I'm just using TikTok as an example here, because it has been extensively written about and a significant number of people have expressed these concerns so much so that it's perhaps the primary example of a phone app which causes people to worry about their data.
But of course, this is largely in the West, of course, because the app is associated with China.
And you could probably say the same thing about other similar apps which are based in the USA, for example, from a different perspective.
Those apps will collect a similar amount of data in a similarly intrusive way.
So to an extent, they are all they're all doing it.
They're all at it. But here is what people have said about TikTok just as a case in point.
and later in this episode I will give a similar case study about Facebook or Meta which is of course based in the USA so I got the following information about TikTok by asking Google Gemini which is you know it's essentially a kind of AI powered search tool for Google and it based its response on a variety of sources including various media outlets, lets government agencies vpn services and universities mostly usa based i should add anyway here's what i found so concerns about tiktok and personal data primarily revolve around the vast amount of information the app collects and the potential for this data to
be accessed or misused particularly by the chinese government due to tiktok's parent company company ByteDance, being based in China.
So, here's a summary of the key concerns.
First of all, extensive data collection.
TikTok collects a wide range of user data, often beyond what many users might expect.
While many apps collect user data, some aspects of TikTok's practices have consistently raised more alarms due to their nature and the company's Chinese ownership.
Is that debatable? Is that a debatable point?
Here are some of the most shocking or concerning aspects.
So extensive biometric data collection.
TikTok has acknowledged collecting biometric identifiers in regions where we're permitted by local laws.
So they haven't apparently haven't broken laws in doing this.
This can include information about facial features, body features and voice prints, right?
Facial features. So, for example, what your face looks like, body features, even being able to identify maybe your outline or other parts of your body.
I don't know what those body features could be, but more than just your face and voice prints.
So, what your voice sounds like, that's a bit much, isn't it?
so they can identify you by your voice or by your face the concern here is not just the collection itself but the potential for this highly sensitive permanent data to be used for identification tracking or even manipulation especially if it were to fall into the wrong hands or be compelled by a government you can imagine how that kind of information could be used in in less let's say entertaining ways also keystroke patterns that's basically recordings of how you have actually typed on your keyboard or where your finger has gone on your screen so keystroke patterns and rhythms battery state and audio
settings beyond typical app usage data reports have indicated tiktok collecting highly granular device information granular means in very small details such as keystroke patterns or rhythms battery state and audio settings this level of detail about how you interact with your device and its physical state goes beyond what many users would expect or consider necessary for a short form video app and could potentially be used for advanced device fingerprinting or behavioral analysis Analysis.
Clipboard access. So your clipboard is any time you copy something on your phone, let's say some text or a photo, you copy it in order to then paste it somewhere else.
It goes onto your clipboard, right?
So clipboard access.
There have been numerous reports, particularly concerning iOS devices, where TikTok was found to be frequently accessing accessing user's clipboard content, even when the app was in the background.
So even when the app is, you're not even looking at it, you've just, you've moved on to something else, you're in your emails or whatever, and you're copy pasting some text or a picture, TikTok is still recording what you're adding to your clipboard, apparently.
While TikTok has claimed this was for anti -spam and legitimate features, the automatic and frequent nature of this access without explicit user consent was a significant privacy breach. This could potentially expose sensitive information copied by users, such as passwords, financial details or private messages.
Anything you've copied onto your clipboard, your password, bank details, anything, even when you're in another app doing something completely different.
Also, metadata of content created, even unshared content tiktok reportedly collects metadata this is i suppose information about the videos or audio or pictures on your phone um right that could include i don't know facial recognition data or maybe location -based information so it reportedly collects metadata about the videos and images users create including identifying objects and scenery scenery so it can identify objects and scenery it could maybe locate the the the the picture based on the content of the picture facial and body features again voice prints and spoken words even if the content
is never actually posted or shared so if it's just saved in your device this means that the app is analyzing and potentially storing information about you about your personal creations before you even decide to make them public raising questions about the scope of its internal surveillance.
I should say also that those of you listening to this who feel it's unfair that I'm talking specifically about TikTok, although I have mentioned that and I will talk about Facebook and Meta in a moment, I should say everyone should be worried about this kind of intrusion, right?
This is not just a kind of like one country versus another country type of thing, right?
I think we're all subject to this level of surveillance and this level of intrusive data harvesting of our personal information i think it's completely unacceptable for anyone wherever you are whoever you are right in whatever political context you live in i think that we can all agree that this is this is surely a breach of our privacy and then well it's the it the response from gemini does mention chinese government compulsion and the potential for that.
This is the overarching and most alarming concern due to ByteDance's, that's TikTok's parent company, headquarters in China.
And I think the suggestion is that because of the reach that the Chinese government has in China relating to being able to involve itself in the affairs of any company that exists and operates there, you know because of by dances headquarters in china there are legal frameworks in china that could compel the company to share data with the chinese government for intelligence or national security purposes despite tiktok's assurances of data localization storing us date u .s user data in the u .s for example the fear persists that the chinese government could still legally demand access to user data algorithms
or even exert influence over content moderation and algorithmic recommendations to push narratives or suppress dissent.
This goes beyond typical commercial data exploitation and into geopolitical and national security territory.
And lack of transparency and shady practices.
Shady practices would be like suspicious things.
Historically, TikTok has faced criticism and even fines, so having to pay money, for a lack of transparency in its data collection practices.
Transparency relates to, you know, information or things being visible.
So not hidden, but transparent, meaning that anyone can see into the company and see what it's doing.
Transparency is a thing that's encouraged, like the GDPR regulations in Europe are supposed to ensure a level of transparency so that ordinary users accessing a website or an app or an email newsletter or something will know that the company involved is going to do this, that, or the other with your data or is taking this kind of information from you, that it should be open, this information should be available to everyone.
That's what transparency means.
So TikTok has faced criticism and fines for its lack of transparency in its data collection practices and how it handles user data, particularly concerning minors, that's underage people, children, and international data transfers.
This perceived ambiguity fuels distrust and makes it harder for users to truly understand what they are agreeing to.
so even when you agree to the terms and conditions which you haven't even read it might even be unclear exactly what you're agreeing to anyway even if you did read them so these aspects combined contribute to the heightened scrutiny that means the sense that people are looking at tiktok and its practices in more careful detail examining it and the and concerns surrounding tiktok's data collection differentiating differentiating it from many other other social media platforms. It should also be said that while TikTok has faced unique scrutiny due to its Chinese ownership and specific data practices,
similar concerns about extensive data collection, privacy, and even potential misuse of data are widespread across many popular Western based apps, particularly social media platforms and those that offer free services.
And of course, it's been said before that when a service offers you something free, that's when you realise that that you are not necessarily the customer, you are in fact the product.
You are the commodity which is being traded, you know.
Anyway, so there you go.
I don't mean to make this a political issue per se.
In fact, as I've said, I think that largely we are all potentially affected by forms of authoritarianism through economic and technological means, regardless of our location or political affiliations.
We're all subject to these kinds of things.
in other words we are all spied on and have our freedoms compromised by powerful people and one of the ways they do it is with a kind of economic and technological supremacy so there you go right now anyway anyone fancy a pint right back to the episode what do you think about this how would you answer that question are there any apps or services which you don't use because you're concerned about how they use your data uh we could say the same thing about Facebook I'm not a fan of Facebook and I generally try to avoid going on it um um because I don't like the way that they've used our data in the past
and there was a scandal involving Facebook and a company called Cambridge Analytica which was a lat which was a basically Facebook allowed um um um certain uh accounts to be targeted by um not just advertising but by political politically motivated um posts and this is all connected to the brexit referendum that there was kind of shady um organizations posting let's say fake news in a very targeted way way to try to promote Britain's exit from the European Union.
Hello again. So it's already time for my second interruption with case study number two, which is the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal.
I thought it would be worth going into some detail about this because, you know, the more detail, the better, rather than just hearing me sort of rambling about this.
I thought that I would look into it in a bit more detail and give give you some more specifics.
So, this information about the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal is from a variety of sources, including UK universities, the UK government website, Wikipedia, and other international trade services.
Also, famous investigative journalism by Carol Cadwalader and a really interesting couple of TED talks that she did on this as well, which you can see on the TED website.
So, the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal handle, which came to light in early 2018, involved the unauthorised collection and use of personal data from millions of Facebook users for political purposes.
What happened? First of all, the data collection mechanism.
In 2014, a Cambridge University researcher named Dr. Alexander Kogan developed a personality quiz app, a personality quiz app called This This is your digital life.
Users who downloaded and took the quiz unknowingly gave the app permission to access not only their Facebook profiles, but also the profiles of their Facebook friends.
At the time, Facebook's API, that's application programming interface.
I guess that's the way that websites interface with other websites and sort of share data across each other and things like that.
uh so facebook's api allowed developers to collect data on users friends by default meaning that was the normal setting that apps that worked with facebook you know sometimes you'd be on facebook and you'd i don't know there'd be like a game app like it used to be words with friends was that done through facebook or other games like that where you would essentially allow the app to share your Facebook information.
So their standard default settings for sharing data included your friends' data, even if the friends themselves hadn't consented.
So if you accepted to do this quiz through Facebook, all of your friends' data would be shared with this app, even if your friends hadn't consented.
Secondly, sale to Cambridge Analytica.
Kogan then sold this collected data to Cambridge Analytica, that's CA for short, a British political consulting firm.
CA was backed by conservative donors like Robert Mercer and former Donald Trump political adviser Steve Bannon as a co -founder.
And there are also sort of allegations of other kinds of funding.
Psychographic profiling and micro -targeting.
Cambridge Analytica used this vast data set to create psychographic profiles of voters.
These profiles aimed to identify individuals' personality traits, vulnerabilities, so that's like their weaknesses, maybe issues, topics that they're particularly sensitive about, and political leanings.
The alleged purpose, when we use the word alleged, it basically means this is what people have said.
It might not have been fully proven in a court of law.
So you saying alleged or the allegation is a way of kind of saying that this isn't necessarily true, but this is what people have said.
Right. Right. So the alleged purpose was then to use this information to develop highly targeted political advertisements and messages designed to influence voters behaviour in elections, including the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit referendum.
Right. So all this information harvested, shared with Cambridge Analytica, and their aim allegedly was to target voters.
what I understood is that they targeted voters who were undecided.
So, let's say if it's the Brexit referendum, you've got voters who clearly are going to vote remain, voters who clearly are going to vote leave, and then there's the people in the middle who haven't quite made up their mind yet.
These are the people who were targeted, right?
The company claimed to have up to 5 ,000 data points on every US voter.
Point four, scope of the data, so the size of the data set.
While Cambridge Analytica initially claimed to have collected data from about 30 million Facebook users, Facebook later confirmed that the data of potentially over 87 million users was improperly accessed, with a significant majority being from the United States.
So the alleged scandal.
The The core of the scandal was the unauthorized harvesting, that's collection without authorization, the unauthorized harvesting and exploitation, that's use for some reason, of personal data for political manipulation.
That's really serious and seriously undemocratic.
Key allegations included lack of informed consent, there's that word consent meaning giving your consent, sense saying that you agree that you allow something to happen millions of facebook users had their data collected without their explicit knowledge or consent for this specific purpose while some users consented to the app for a quiz they were unaware their friends data would also be taken or that the data would be sold and used for political targeting deception the app developer alexander kogan allegedly deceived users about how their data would be used and facebook's culpability.
Facebook was heavily criticised for allowing its platform's API to enable such broad data collection from friends of app users, also not adequately monitoring how third -party developers were using the data they collected, being aware of Cambridge Analytica's improper data acquisition as early as 2015, but failing to ensure the data was destroyed and not acting decisively enough until the story broke publicly in 2018.
Apparently, they knew about this in 2015, Facebook.
They knew that Cambridge Analytica was doing improper things, but they didn't do anything about it until it became public.
Then they realized, oh, we've got to do something about this because it makes us look bad.
Initially downplaying the incident as not a data breach because no systems were hacked, but rather a violation of its terms of service, critics argued this was a semantic distinction that obscured the significant policy violation.
So, a semantic distinction.
When we talk about semantics, we just talk about the meanings of words, right?
This is what semantics is.
So, this is a typical sort of legal response where the argument is over, you know, the precise definition of the words used.
So, they were saying, this was not a data breach, reach. No one was hacked.
It was a violation of our terms of service.
And the critics said that this was just a way of avoiding the real issue, which was the privacy violation.
And then we have the manipulation of elections.
The most serious allegation was that this data was used to create sophisticated, manipulative political campaigns designed to influence the outcome of major major elections, raising concerns about the integrity of democratic processes.
The scandal led to significant public outcry, governmental investigations, calls for stricter data privacy regulations like GDPR and a major hit to Facebook's reputation.
Yeah this is definitely the time when I really was turned off Facebook and I saw it for what it is which was I just felt like it was a cynical um a cynical site just gathering my data and then potentially manipulating me and I just it made me feel unwell not only that but also just the experience of using facebook these days I find it bewildering and um unnecessarily complex and almost you can feel like this heavy presence of of this algorithm pushing certain accounts towards me and pushing in lots of other content that I really didn't choose to look at that was the idea with Facebook originally
is that you would choose exactly who you followed and stuff and the bewildering number of options and privacy settings which is almost you feel like it it feels like it's intentionally confusing confusing, so that you don't really understand how to control it all, and as a result, you kind of let it do what it wants to do, which is push certain things at you.
And, you know, half my friends on Facebook seem to be invisible to me.
I don't know why. Anyway, continuing this case study, Facebook faced numerous fines to pay money, and had to implement changes to its data privacy policy and API access you have to watch these companies their main agenda remember is to make money and we are their commodity they don't necessarily have our best interests at heart despite the way they present themselves as being this kind of friend based exploit which is all there to help connect people that's all just part of their marketing what they really want to do is use our attention to grow their profits and their influence.
So we have to remember that and be careful of what we allow these companies, these huge, these are the most powerful organisations in the world.
So we have to, you know, keep them in check and see what they're actually doing.
Right, that's the end of case study number two.
Back to the episode.
episode. So, some relevant vocab we have privacy or privacy in the USA, data security, personal data, all the information about ourselves, a trade -off, right?
We have to trade these things off.
You have to make a trade -off between personal privacy and convenience.
Compromise In this arrangement, we accept a certain level of compromise.
That's where you accept perhaps less.
You give something away in order to get something you want.
This is the nature of a trade -off.
In order to get something, you have to give something away.
You have to make compromises, right?
Intrusive is an adjective that we could use to describe certain apps or services that go into your personal data and gather things information about you this is quite intrusive to intrude on your privacy right an intruder an intruder would be a person who comes into your private space perhaps to steal something a robber maybe that could be an intruder intruders are intrusive you could say also that you know these apps and things are quite intrusive they go into our personal areas into our personal zone and take information about us or at least we kind of give away the information without even
realizing it because we're not really paying attention to all of that stuff surveillance is another word surveillance relates to being watched being surveyed being essentially spied upon for commercial purposes or maybe for political purposes.
We're not sure. Anonymity.
Anonymity is what we probably should have on the internet.
That's where we're able to browse the internet without the internet itself or the organisations on it knowing who we are, you know.
Like, for example, if you, you know, you might go on a forum or a chat room or something and choose to hide your identity.
In that case, you would choose use anonymity.
You choose to be anonymous.
Examples of that language.
There's always a trade -off between privacy and convenience when you use social media.
Some apps can feel quite intrusive because they constantly track your personal data.
Many people are willing to sacrifice anonymity for convenience, but they may regret it later.
What about you? What do you think about those things?
Let's move on to the second point.
There are 14 of these points.
So let's keep moving so data sharing every time we sign up for a new account fill in an online form or even browse a website we share personal data knowing when how and with whom to share this data is crucial the stakes are high because if this information is mishandled through leaks or deliberate misuse it could lead to fraud spam or loss of control over our digital lives understanding the fine print and managing our data sharing preferences helps us take control now actually the questions the discussion questions for this are the same as in the previous topic so no need to answer them again but nevertheless
this is quite interesting data sharing again this refers to the compromises that we might make when we sign up to various services that we get the convenience but we have to hand over um you know a lot of our personal information um bits of vocab the stakes are high because this in this if this information is mishandled um it could be serious right so the stakes are high this is quite a good expression i'm just going to note this one down so the stakes are high it just means that the potential is very high um the potential for both good and bad outcomes is very high um right so if you're dealing
with a situation i guess this comes from gambling if you've put a lot of money into a card game right if you've bet a lot of of money in a card game then the stakes are high the potential for great wins and great losses is very high so it's quite serious if the stakes are low then it's not that serious because you're not really going to lose very much you're not really going to win very much it's not that serious so the stakes are high in this kind of situation because there is actually quite a high potential for the misuse or mishandling of your personal information in a variety of ways.
I mentioned some of the more paranoid ways a bit earlier.
But we've got other things that could be done with your data.
First of all, there's simply spam, right?
Which we all know about.
This is just an annoying aspect of modern life that, you know, thankfully most of us now have email filters that filter out the spam and if you ever look into your spam folder you can see that your your internet account is probably filtering out dozens of spam emails every hour you know there's just so much spam from companies trying to advertise to us people trying to steal our information um it seems that our personal data is like this extremely valuable commodity these these days that everyone is desperate to get hold of we really do live in the data age i guess because it's our data that everybody
wants that everyone wants to buy and sell for whatever reason the more data the these organizations have the more powerful they are um but anyway so the stakes are high uh giving away our data could lead to us getting a lot of spam which is just It could lead to fraud, which is a kind of crime.
Maybe this could be things like identity theft or other forms of information based crime.
Fraud can be all sorts of different things.
It could be essentially, you know, lying about information in order to get some sort of advantage.
It could just mean taking your bank details and finding ways to steal your money or loss of control over our digital lives.
So this would be, for example, losing access to our social media accounts, losing our identity theft, people essentially taking our identities and using them.
And, you know, you think about scammers.
These are people or organizations who make it their work.
They're criminals. They make it their work to try to find ways to get into your maybe your bank account, find ways to get money from you by tricking you, by scamming you.
um so the stakes are high in this situation because um you know the the the potential problems that could be caused by the misuse of our data uh it can be quite serious um information can be mishandled meaning um yeah if this if it's mishandled if it's not kept private if it's not kept secure if it's lost or maybe sold it could be lost through leaks you know an information leak is where information gets out originally a leak would be when maybe water comes out of a pipe in your home if you've got a water leak it means maybe there's a hole in one of the pipes in your house and water is coming out
of the hole and it's dripping through the ceiling oh no we've got a leak but these days we often talk about information leaks for example government very sensitive government information being given accidentally or maybe on purpose to a newspaper or to another government that is an information leak or personal information can be leaked you know companies like your email provider provider um have your this a company like that would have um millions of uh of recordings of people's data and that data might be leaked for various reasons we every now and then you get an email from some company saying
we've had a data breach or a data leak means that you've got to change your password because blah blah blah um understanding the fine print and managing our data sharing preferences helps us take control so they're the same questions as before but we've got words like data breach or leak third parties so if you do a if you sign up to facebook and you think it's just between me and facebook well facebook might actually share your information with a third party this is another organization another company so that's what we mean when we we say third parties, other companies, secondary to the ones
that we initially are dealing with.
Consent. Consent is basically giving your agreement for certain things to happen.
For example, we talk about cookie consent.
Do you consent to cookies from this website?
Basically, do you say, yes, I agree?
Yes, that's OK. That means giving your consent.
If you consent for something to happen, it means you agree and accept.
You said yes, you allow it to happen.
Terms and conditions, I think we understand.
This is like when you sign up for a different website, you have to read the terms and conditions, which essentially explain what that website can do with your data.
You can opt out. for example opting out of cookies is opting meaning choosing as an option to be out so essentially rejecting cookies GDPR this is the sort of regulation procedure in Europe which means that companies have to be transparent and clear about the way that they are using your data And it's GDPR, which has forced a lot of websites to give you the option to opt out of cookies or at least control your preferences with the way that cookies are being used and so on.
You know, email lists, if a company puts your email into an email list, it should ask for your consent.
You should be accepting that first. but i mean you know the number of times we end up in email lists without our consent is is it's not good that's why there is a regulation procedure like gdpr in place do you have similar a similar thing where you are in the world examples again i never read the terms and conditions so i probably give consent to a lot of things without realizing it after the recent data breach i decided to opt opt out of sharing my data with third parties?
Do you always accept cookies without thinking about the implications?
OK, let's move away from sharing our data and stuff and talk about the third item in my list, which is digital detox.
So with our lives increasingly tied to screens, whether it's for work, socialising or entertainment, it's easy to lose track of of time and feel overwhelmed.
A digital detox means consciously stepping back from technology to recharge mentally and emotionally.
It can help us sleep better, reduce stress and reconnect with offline hobbies and relationships.
But actually switching off is often harder than it sounds.
So this is digital detox.
Normally when we talk about detox, we're talking about changes to our diet to try and eat more healthily and to get rid of toxins in our bodies so you know i don't know after christmas for example when you eat lots of unhealthy food that's my alarm to remind me to drink water after after christmas um yes you might have a detox in january where you try to eat much more healthily and avoid alcohol and stuff to give your body a a chance to get rid of all those toxins a digital detox is the same kind of thing but you essentially get you give yourself a chance to get away from all of the digital um
what would you call it input in your life essentially trying to use your phone less get it going away from screens as much as possible so yeah with our lives increasingly tied to screens our lives are connected to screens we We sit in front of screens all day at work and then at home we're in front of screens for our entertainment and stuff, we are connected to the screens, we're tied to them increasingly more and more.
Whether it's for work, socialising or entertainment it's easy to lose track of time and feel overwhelmed.
If you lose track of time it means you get, you lose that sense of what time it is, you feel overwhelmed when things feel like they are too much. a digital detox means consciously stepping back from technology to recharge mentally and emotionally because when we are always on our phones looking at the screens looking at whatever it is whatever bit of social media we're looking at of course our attention is being manipulated all the time where there are lots of tricks designed to make us either keep our attention here move our attention and also manipulate our emotions it can actually be quite
a sort of manipulative experience again without us really realizing it we're constantly being manipulated by the things we're looking at in the sense that we're being our emotions are being triggered our feelings are being worked on and when you consider how much sort of information you give to the to the apps that that you're looking at, it's quite clever the way that they are able to work on your emotions, your preferences in order to keep you on that platform.
In fact, our attention is, I talked about our data being a commodity which is bought and sold, but also largely our attention is a commodity now, which these companies trade in, the more they can keep our attention, keep us looking at the things they want us to look at, the more value they get.
And so our attention is also traded around.
So it can be quite an impactful thing to be on online all the time not just in a physical sense of the way that that you know the light shining in your eyes um you know that side of things but also in a in a mental health sense that constantly being subtly manipulated being rewarded with dopamine and all these other little micro manipulations that are constantly going on that does have an impact on us so stepping away away from technology and going back to basics and just living without it for a while can be I think probably very very good for us so questions how much screen time do you have each
day is it too much or is it okay how do you know um I mean out I obviously too much screen time I think I think for most of us it's probably too much it does make me wonder about younger people people who have grown up with phones and for them i wonder if they even realize how much screen time they're getting and what the what it's really like to live without screen time what the difference is a lot of people uh are growing up now with no sense of objectivity on this and i'm showing my age when i say this but i i remember you know um a time when there were no smartphones of course and i remember
a time when there was no when there were no mobile phones at all uh and it's quite a different time quite a different experience so anyway how much screen time do you have uh probably too much first of all at work you know when i'm working i sit in in front of a computer all the time, either preparing podcast episodes or doing all the other different things I have to do in relation to making podcasts.
A lot of it does involve sitting here in front of a computer and then in the evening or in my free time.
Yeah, of course, I'm often on my phone or in front of my computer, probably on YouTube or maybe Netflix or some other uh streaming platform and yeah it's it's too much I think it is too much how do I know um well sometimes I just feel a bit burnt out from all of that screen time other times I actually get a headache from looking at the screen too much and sometimes I wonder if maybe my mood is being affected it's very hard to know because you've got nothing to compare it against But it does make me wonder if maybe I would be perhaps happier.
I might feel more stable, more grounded, more mentally well if I wasn't looking at screens so much. Next question, are you good at detoxing from technology?
How do you do it? How could you improve in this area?
area. I think I'm fairly good at it because I'm kind of aware of it.
And there are times when I make a conscious decision not to look at my phone.
And I've spoken about this on the podcast before.
I find that when I do that, when I, for example, in the evening, actively choose not to be on my phone and instead to read a book or play music or even just lie down with my eyes closed or do or go out and socialize with my friends something like that I generally have a much much better time often I feel like I'm scrolling my life away if I'm just it's automatic the kids Kids are in bed.
My wife and I have had dinner.
We end up on the sofa on our devices.
And often that is time, I think, that's wasted.
I'm just scrolling through YouTube, searching for the video that's just going to get my attention.
I'm not necessarily looking for something in particular.
I'm just letting YouTube choose for me, just waiting to find the thing that's going to catch my attention.
And it's a sort of mindless state to be in.
I do feel generally happier when I put the phone down get get a book and just read from the page it's a much more wholesome feeling and I think I'll probably get better sleep as a result I think I could do that a lot more and I often dream about doing that a lot more it's terrible isn't it really I think we are compulsive with our phones we just automatically reach for our phones because perhaps we are caught up in a cycle of reward you know being rewarded with little it's quite addictive you know using your phone it's quite addictive the reason it's addictive is because the people who make these
devices and the software on them they know exactly what they're doing they know exactly how to keep you engaged and how to reward you with with little satisfying hits of dopamine.
That's just the way that these systems work.
They hold your attention.
They never let you get bored because there's always some new little bit of stimulation going on.
And you see this more and more with like short -form content, which is designed to make sure you never get bored because something new is only a swipe away.
And other little tricks, like for example, I publish on YouTube and I'm I use the YouTube studio in the YouTube studio there's the creator dashboard and in that dashboard you actually have a little leaderboard of your 10 most recent episodes that you've uploaded and if your most recent episode is number one in the list meaning it's getting more views than the other previous 10 that's what you want that's definitely what you're always looking for and your most recent episode is somewhere in that list, that premier league of episodes, let's say, of your last episodes, when your episode hits that number
one spot, it actually rewards you with a little shower of confetti.
So a little shower of confetti comes out from the number, it goes one out of 10, little shower of confetti.
That little shower of confetti does definitely definitely trigger some sort of little reward mechanism within you where your brain makes you feel a little happy it's a little response to that shower of confetti which it's essentially giving you dopamine we know what we know this we've researched this we know what's going on it's a little dopamine hit that you get it's the same kind of hit that you get when you see that someone has liked your video or given you some positive response to a post that you've written and little number a little a little uh you know um yeah um what's the word for it
confetti that's it a little confetti explosion and as a result you know it's quite addictive you end up looking for that you're always searching for that little feeling without even realizing it's not it's not necessarily conscious for you but it's just something you're always reaching for your phone looking for that little moment of stimulation i think that i could probably detox from technology a lot more it would probably be better for me i i guess some relevant vocab fit for this screen time we know to unplug so um you you plug in your phone if your battery is running out if your battery is dying
you need to plug it in right plug in my could you plug in my phone and to disconnect would be to unplug so that's literally plug in and unplug but also you can unplug yourself from technology uh mindfulness this is just that sense of being aware of yourself aware of what you're doing and aware of how you're feeling in every moment it's a good way to try to keep Keep yourself grounded so that you don't end up in kind of, let's say, unhealthy behaviour if you're always staying attentive to what you're doing and how it's feeling.
FOMO. Have you heard of this?
Fear of missing out.
This is one of those, perhaps, things that keeps us engaged with our technology, with our apps, with our social media, because we've got this sense that we don't want to feel that we're missing out on stuff that's happening.
This is why we're often scrolling through different forms of social media, because we are aware that there is a whole world of stuff going on that we feel we can't miss out on.
This is the fear of missing out.
It's a thing that drives us to stay connected.
And then self -discipline.
This is just having the self -control to, for example, disconnect, unplug and not worry about all that stuff.
For example, I try to unplug from all devices after 9pm to reduce my screen time.
Turning off notifications is a simple way to create boundaries.
Boundaries, these are like lines that you would draw to create limits for certain things.
For example, if you want to limit the influence that your phone is having, the way it's accessing your personal life, you might set a boundary.
For example, making sure that you have all push notifications turned off on your phone so that it's not crossing over into your personal sphere too much. much practicing mindfulness helps me resist FOMO when I see everyone posting holiday photos for example okay moving on to number four oh I needed to drink water let's have a water break then before item four which is all about online behavior the way we behave and wait the way other people behave online drink of water first here we go big news Wayfair's biggest sale of of the season is here it's black friday in july right now score up to 80 off
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Solve a real problem and make sure the right people hear about it Promote your business with podcast ads on acast get started at go .acast .com slash advertise i'm wondering if i'm going to get through all 14 items in this list i'm trying to go quite quickly but uh i think this might have to be a two -part episode because um it's been it's getting on for an hour it's been 45 minutes and i'm only on the fourth item out of 14 this might be a double episode you can let me know what you think um so number four though is online behavior the internet gives us an enormous platform to express ourselves but it
also means we have a responsibility to behave ethically from spreading kindness to avoiding harmful activities like trolling or cyber bullying our digital actions have real world consequences.
How we conduct ourselves online not only affects others but also shapes our own reputations.
So the internet gives us an enormous platform to express ourselves.
Yes it's a space where we can express our thoughts, feelings, opinions but it means we have a responsibility to to behave ethically we have to remember that our actions have consequences and that although there is this kind of filter again of the internet we sort of it they say that the internet connects us brings us all closer together but to an extent the internet separates us as well where you could can be on your own in your room or, I don't know, sitting on your toilet on social media.
You read someone's post and you don't feel that connection.
It's not as if you are in the same room sharing the same space as that person.
And as a result, you might write something that you would never say to that person face to face.
You might do something that would be unthinkable, that would would be so hurtful and so rude but because you essentially feel a lot of distance and because you feel like the social conventions are not the same on the internet and because you feel that there is no reaper there are no repercussions like if you said something rude to someone in a room they might be able to essentially they might be able to even touch you hurt you physically or at least respond to you or you'd have to live with that person in that room at that moment after having said it it would be awkward whereas on social media you
can just kind of like respond without even thinking and never even have to worry about it ever again so to an extent the internet divides us it separates us and takes away a certain kind of human closeness that perhaps is really an important factor in making sure that we are that we treat each other in a in an appropriate way and that we don't um hurt each other so we always have to remember that we have a responsibility to to behave ethically and morally from spreading kindness to avoiding harmful activities like trolling i think you probably know what trolling is it's essentially kind of like
uh you know being rude to people online just for the hell of it often cyber bullying is even worse than trolling this is where you are essentially harassing or abusing people online and it can be immensely hurtful our digital actions have real world consequences okay so some questions have you ever seen examples of abusive online behavior and does social media sometimes make you feel bad um yeah i mean i've i've seen lots of examples of essentially people just being really mean and nasty online um twitter or x as it should be called um you see so much of that kind of thing where maybe even just
someone fairly innocently does something on online and And they just get completely abused for it for whatever reason.
And there is the there's the phenomenon of social shaming, right?
Public shaming, which is where, yeah, someone does something or says something.
Maybe they shouldn't have said it might have been a bit stupid, but they just get countless responses from people being abusive and nasty.
not just criticisms not just sort of diplomatically worded criticisms but straight up abuse and you know you wonder how that sort of thing happens i suppose it's because there aren't really many other opportunities for this sort of thing to occur in the real world it's rare that you can get all so many people in a huge crowd all essentially criticizing or abusing one person all at the same time it's almost sort of physically impossible unless you're all in a big room together and that one person is standing up on the stage and everyone is shouting abuse at them and throwing tomatoes at them but it's
quite difficult and rare for that physical situation to happen whereas online online.
It's incredibly easy.
So, of course, I've seen all sorts of things, example, I can't think of any specifics now of just, you know, someone online being abused and it must be crushing.
It must be horrendous.
I mean, OK, so maybe I've seen examples of, let's say, a famous online line english teacher who arguably was um who made a couple of videos that were questionable in the way that they treated uh non -native speakers making mistakes and the sort of subtext of the videos was if English is not your first language, then you might sound a bit stupid if you say certain things.
Or if you speak with this accent, it makes you sound uneducated.
So try to speak with this accent.
The subtext being that maybe a bit clumsily perpetuating certain um um what's the word for it prejudices against non -native speakers right non -native like native speakerism being perpetuated by an English teacher on on YouTube and then another English teacher comes in and publicly criticizes them on their channel and even suggests that their followers should go and criticise the other teacher and make their life a misery, that kind of thing is almost encouraged by the internet.
You know, they call it YouTube drama.
That sort of thing is almost encouraged by the system of how a social media like YouTube or maybe Instagram or whatever works rather than simply the one person directly talking to the other person in private and saying i think the way you're doing this isn't right and criticizing them privately instead sort of mobilizing an army of people who then um criticize the other person for it you know it's like the internet almost encourages this sort of thing but in actual fact it can be incredibly Incredibly upsetting and damaging for the poor person who suddenly is being criticised by so many people
all at the same time.
It's incredibly dangerous.
Social media does make me feel bad sometimes, just when I see that sort of thing happening, when I see the kind of the worst of human nature being set free, being allowed to happen.
Yeah, that makes me feel bad.
You kind of lose faith in humanity when you see abusive comments and things like that.
And I saw a lot of that stuff back in the days of Brexit when there were, you know, you got a lot of abusive...
If someone basically came out and criticised Brexit, a lot of other people...
It was very kind of combative and it felt like two sides fighting against each other.
and there will be a lot of abuse thrown around and you just think this is not the right way to have a normal mature conversation about a serious subject it became just a way to throw abuse at each other yeah so there you go again i think somehow the mechanics of social media allow the worst of human nature to come out it's almost as if as humans we've never before in our evolution or in our history had at this kind of social dynamic and as a result we kind of lost our ability to moderate our behavior and the result of that is that people end up feeling absolutely terrible in their online interactions
I think there have there have been cases of obviously there have been many cases of serious mental health issues as a result but also suicides and other things like that i think it's a dangerous thing if we if we're not mindful about it so relevant vocab here is cyber bullying bullying normally happens in school it's like kids uh bullying other kids like you get a bully who picks on other children either physically abusing them or mentally abusing them harassing them and it can be horrible the kids can can be very depressed they don't want to go to school it can affect their schooling they can have serious
mental health issues as a result of bullying cyber bullying is more or less the same thing but on the internet right trolling we know about hate speech this is abusive language language used in a very hateful way it could have a racial element to it or a sex sexual element to it harassment is similar to bullying digital footprint your digital footprint is essentially the the sort of trace that you leave in terms of your data usage online so you leave a kind of trail behind you whenever you use the internet this is your digital footprint we need to be aware of our digital footprint people can i
don't know how it relates really to your online behavior i think it's more in relation to um the way you you leave data on the internet which people can use but maybe you could use digital footprint in relation to um you know the kind of impact that you've had um with your interactions online and then netiquette well we have etiquette which is like the rules of behavior for example polite behavior that's etiquette for example etiquette at the dinner table that it's rude to put your elbows on the table you have to chew you know eat your mouth chew with your mouth closed don't talk with your mouth
full say please and thank you this is etiquette and netiquette is the same thing but for the internet.
So like rules, social rules for the internet.
I mean, I remember netiquette used to be talked about a lot in the early days of the internet, but I don't think people talk about netiquette so much anymore, which is maybe, you know, an indictment of the way that we have learned to use the internet.
Examples. I've seen some awful examples of cyberbullying on instagram remember that your digital footprint lasts forever so good netiquette is important so be careful of the way that you interact with people and make sure that you uh you know that you stay polite let's see if i can maybe do the next three items in my list which would take me up to seven and that would be halfway that would be a good point to stop and then maybe carry on on in part two okay by the way i will collect vocab from this episode and put it in a list at the end of the pdf so all the bits of chunky vocab that have come
up that i've explained quite quickly and moved on you'll be able to consolidate all that by looking at a vocab list which you'll find on the pdf there will also be memory questions to help you jog your memory and recall bits of vocabulary that have come up here.
Hopefully you're discovering some new words and things during this episode and that you're able to use this to expand your vocabulary in order to be able to talk about all these things.
I think it's important that you can talk about these things in English because these are such important issues in our lives today.
Let's move on then to number five which is digital legacy.
Our lives generate a massive amount of digital material, photos, photos, emails, social media posts, documents, all stored on servers somewhere.
But what happens to this digital legacy when we die or when we can no longer manage it ourselves?
Planning for your digital assets means ensuring important memories are preserved, accounts are secured, and private information doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
So do you keep a lot of things in the cloud?
So So photos, documents, music, personal data, why and why not?
Which cloud service do you use?
Do you use iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox or something else?
And why do you use that particular service?
So, yeah, I do keep a lot of things in the cloud.
I mean, when you think about digital legacy and all of the data that we all leave behind, mind this is not so much an issue of privacy but more simply a case of the sheer volume of stuff that we all generate in our lives it all has to be saved in the cloud i suppose uh that's generally the way it's done these days and um we have to think about how we keep that secure but also that all gets saved on servers that does actually occupy physical space those servers have to be maintained they have to be cooled with water they do require a lot of energy to keep running which is a you know i mean it's
it's not great is it that we're all uh filling up the world with our data um but yeah i keep things in the cloud i mean i've got iCloud because i use apple products i've also got google drive those are probably the main cloud storage systems that i use use um which cloud service yeah there you go why do i use that particular service well i use icloud just because it's convenient as an apple user and you automatically get given a certain amount of storage um what else uh and dry google drive i use because it's you know i find it really convenient for google documents um i don't know how secure
they are really um anyway relevant vocab we talk about cloud storage uh backup making a backup of your data digital inheritance i suppose this relates to where does that data go when you die and do you you know do you pass it on to to like you know your loved ones that's in inheritance means the things that are given probably to your children when you die that's your inheritance and normally we associate that out with things like property money uh possessions right your inheritance the things you inherit from your parents probably but then digital inheritance would be all the things that you pass
on in the digital world uh two -factor authentication is just a system uh to keep things more secure you know When you sign into your Google Drive account, you need two ways to get in.
You enter your password, but then you also have to receive an activation code on your phone or something like that.
This is just like a security measure.
We call it two -factor authentication.
Encryption relates to often like cloud services will not only store your data, but encrypt it, meaning they will kind of make the data I don't know what they do how they encrypt it but I'm sure that I've got people listening to this who work in this area but something is done to the data so it's kind of scrambled and it can only be unscrambled by the person who has full access to the account which means that the data is protected it can't just be leaked that easily because it's It's been locked and, you know, encoded in a certain way.
And archives are just like stores of old things, like you have archives of old works of art, for example, or archives of Luke's English podcast episodes or archives of all your old photos and things like that.
Managing your photos is a bit of a nightmare, isn't it?
I don't know if you're an iPhone user user but that's a real pain in the neck i have to say and you kind of think what are apple doing are they doing that on purpose because managing your photos the problem is that your phone gets filled up with photos you we always we all get that annoying moment where your phone slows down and you realize that it's full the storage on your phone is full and it's largely photos and you think well all these photos are in the cloud right so if i if i just delete them from my phone they're still in the cloud in my iCloud so everything's fine but the thing is I've
never worked out how this how to stop this happening if you delete photos on your phone they also get deleted from the cloud which seems to be the you know that that's up the opposite of what the point should be you should be able to just back them up into the cloud and then delete them from your phone but no it's like it's all connected so when you delete them on your phone you also end up deleting them from the cloud so I don't understand how this happens and as a result you end up having to like get a new phone I don't know it's it's really confusing can you explain that to me anyway examples
I use cloud storage to keep a backup of all my family photos so a backup that's a noun a backup notice the stress is on the word back so that's a backup the verb is to back back something up.
And in the phrasal verb, it's up, which is stressed.
And this is true with lots of these examples of phrasal verbs and their noun equivalents, right?
To back something up and to make a backup, right?
In fact, I did a whole premium series all about this subject, phrasal verbs and their noun equivalents.
I think it's P66, P65, is it?
Premium listeners, as you can confirm but if you want to get a whole series about phrasal verbs and their noun equivalents check out LEP premium have you ever thought about your digital inheritance what happens to your accounts after you're gone this is actually a really important thing personally I do sometimes wonder about my digital inheritance especially with my podcast stuff I think if I died right what i would like i would like someone to be able to publish at least one post or one episode to say oh yeah by the way sorry you haven't had any podcasts for a while it's just that luke died um
that's gonna that will need to happen at some point it's something worth thinking about isn't it and also we've probably all had that experience of sadly like one of our friends dying but their social media accounts are still alive which is quite a uh quite a disturbing phenomenon in fact quite a good uh good plot line for a horror movie where you know someone has died and it's very sad and you notice their social media account is still a lot is still active and then one day you get a message from that person oh good idea for a horror film um And the message is like, how are you?
And I thought you were dead.
No, I'm not dead. What?
In fact, I'm standing outside your window.
And they're right there at the window.
Using encryption and two -factor authentication makes your digital legacy safer.
Yeah. Number six, tech addiction.
From endless social media feeds to the dopamine hit of a new notification, technology is designed to keep us hooked.
while tech can make life easier and more entertaining it's also easy to slip into compulsive patterns to slip into compulsive patterns that's nice um um there are there have been other bits of vocab which i can add to my list uh but that's quite good i'll come back to that in a second being aware of the signs of tech addiction helps us regain control and use use technology in healthier ways.
So to slip into compulsive patterns, compulsive means doing things without really thinking them through fully.
So if you are a compulsive person, you kind of just do things without really thinking about it.
And we are quite compulsive.
I think most of us are probably quite compulsive with our mobile phone usage, where, like I said before, you sit down at the end of the day on the sofa and the automatic thing to do is just to start scrolling through whatever social media platform you use.
And that's quite compulsive.
You're not really thinking about it.
You just end up doing it.
I do find myself doing that.
I'll pick up my phone in order to check the weather and I'm on some social media before I know it and I'm down a rabbit hole and then I go never mind that put my phone down and then I'm like what was I doing oh yeah I was checking the weather and I picked my phone up again so we are quite compulsive it's easy to slip into compulsive patterns mean to slip in means start doing those things without really intending to in the same way that you would slip if you're walking on on ice, you would slip, you can slip into a pattern of behavior, meaning you just kind of accidentally start doing that without
intending to. So tech addiction.
Okay. So do you know any examples of tech addiction?
Yeah. I mean, you know, like the most well -known ones are things like, well, people just getting addicted to social media, spending unhealthy amounts of time on it, gaming as well people spending hours and hours and hours playing certain games in certain you know online games especially to the point where it becomes unhealthy and addiction i think is defined by any habit which first of all is probably unhealthy but also any habit where you lose that sense of control over when you do it and don't do it so any habit that becomes becomes compulsive where you you lose a sense of like when you can control
you know you just feel you have to do it or you can't control when you want to do it and the other one is when you stop doing it or when that habit is taken away from you how do you respond what what kind of withdrawal symptoms do you experience so if we talk about addiction to cigarettes right which which is obviously unhealthy, but we do it anyway.
It's compulsive in the sense that we are compelled to do it.
We don't necessarily want to, but we end up doing it anyway.
And when you take away the cigarettes, when that nicotine is taken away, we experience horrible physical and mental withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal means taking the thing away.
And the symptoms of withdrawal from nicotine uh you know you become very irritable um you can't focus um and you get these incredible cravings where it's almost unbearable how much you need to get to smoke a cigarette in order to make the cravings go away uh and it's the same story with you know many other substances as well but with tech addiction it can be a similar thing where you can let's say just your phone just simply the act of going on your phone you're compelled to do it you don't necessarily choose to do it you just end up grabbing your phone and you're on it like i said before uh maybe
it's bad for us because you know like i mentioned before it's probably physically not great to be looking at to screen all the time and um mentally also is not very good for us probably probably.
And also there are withdrawal symptoms often.
You know, have you, I don't know if you've ever experienced it, but like where suddenly that that option is taken away from you, how do you respond?
Personally, I tend to respond quite well to it.
It makes me feel much more calm and healthy.
But I think there are plenty of examples of people who, when the phone is taken away from them they don't react to it very well and though you know you can see that tech addiction is a real thing so are you addicted even just a little bit to your phone to games or to the internet how do you know yeah i'm sure i am i'm sure i'm addicted to to this in the ways that i've described maybe not that much i think i've probably got it in check but i think there's probably a certain amount of addiction going on how do i know because i'm compelled to grab my phone it's often the last thing i check at night
the first thing i check in the morning which is quite sad isn't it really but i think that i'm not the only one i suppose that most of us are like that have you ever tried to live without your device for a while how do you feel if you don't know where your phone is um like my wife and i often talk about this we say we should leave our we should not have our phones in the bedroom we should keep the phone somewhere else we talk about out like this like it's a big life decision like should we have a should we ban the phones from the bedroom we totally should we know that we should but we never do
um how do i feel if i don't know where my phone is i don't feel great i'm like where's my phone you know you do panic right we do panic when we don't know where our phone is oh have you seen my phone it's like oh god where's my phone we do tend to freak out i remember not that long ago i was out with my wife and kids we were out having a day in Paris and we walked through some touristy areas I had like several layers of clothing on because it was not hot this is like in the near the end of winter I think it was and at one point I realized I couldn't find my phone I was checking my pockets check
my bag where is it oh god and I couldn't find it and I I thought to myself oh no it's been oh I've been pickpocketed I was convinced that someone had taken the phone out of my back pocket while I was walking through a touristy area and instantly the day was ruined it was like no not my phone oh god right we're gonna have to go to the mobile phone shop cancel the contract cancel the sim card do this do that get a replacement phone it's like the day was ruined and so we walked to the metro station to find the nearest phone shop to do that and the other it's like the day was completely ruined as
we were walking down into the metro I felt my inside pocket of my inside jacket and the phone was there and the relief the relief that I felt in that moment like that rush of I guess of endorphins or whatever the chemicals that flooded my brain the relief I felt when I realized I had my phone it was like like the best high I'd had forever.
You know, it was just an amazing feeling.
We all felt so much relief.
And it then became the greatest day that we'd had for ages.
And we went back out into the park and we're like, you know what?
Let's go on that big observation wheel.
They have in the centre of Paris, in the park, they have this observation wheel, a bit like the London Eye.
And you can go up in the wheel.
you can have a great view of the city from up there we would never normally have chosen to do it you know it's never something we would choose to do but on that particular day we were like you know what life just is worth living again let's go up on the observation wheel why not we went on the observation wheel we had chocolate cookies and coffee and had the best day of our lives but But how do you feel if you don't know where your phone is?
Well, we panic, don't we?
We panic and we freak out.
It's the end of the world.
And then when we find it again, oh, such relief.
What things make up most of your screen time?
Which things hold your attention?
For me, it's YouTube.
I'm a bit of a YouTube junkie, as I said before.
And also the YouTube studio, checking out that list of which episodes are performing.
performing uh way you know my recent episode how is it performing if the if it's near the top i'm i'm i feel good if it's down at the bottom i feel terrible if it hits that top spot i get the confetti oh that's good dopamine is a chemical which is which is released by the brain i understand it's like a reward chemical it's a kind of narcotic i think that your brain naturally naturally produces that gives you a sort of reward feeling and we can become addicted to that and certain stimulants stimulus causes our brain to release dopamine which is i suppose how we end up being addicted to things on the internet compulsive
i've talked about scrolling that's like going through things on the screen making the screen go down or making the screen go up which which is what we do when we're on social media.
We scroll through different posts or videos or photos.
Binge watching. Binge watching is when we watch content online for a long period of time.
For example, if you start watching a Netflix series at 10 p .m. and it's so fascinating and brilliant that you end up binge watching the whole series, you stay up until three o 'clock in the morning binge watching the show.
That's watching a lot of stuff in one sitting, let's say.
we also have binge drinking it's where people go out and drink lots of alcoholic drinks in one go which is very unhealthy and binge eating that's where you might i don't know eat lots of stuff lots of unhealthy like you've bought some ice cream and you know there's ice cream in the fridge you might eat the whole tub of ice cream in one evening that's binging on ice cream also unhealthy withdrawal i've talked about that's where something is taken away from you like whether it's um cigarettes alcohol or uh you know access to your phone a habit loop that's where um a habit a loop is a thing that goes
round and round and we can end up in a habit loop where we go in this cycle of reward requiring that reward getting it again and going back around round and again and trigger trigger is a word things trigger something so like social media can can trigger a dopamine response in the brain that's i suppose what trigger means trigger means cause it to happen we also use trigger on social media to refer to when someone becomes quickly emotional in response to something you can be triggered that means to have a often negative emotional response to something so someone writes a comment and you instantly
get angry that means you've been triggered by it examples sometimes i find myself scrolling mindlessly for hours without without realizing it when i try to cut back i actually feel withdrawal symptoms like restlessness that's where you can't rest or relax notifications can act as a trigger ping pulling you into a habit loop of checking your phone i mentioned before like you want to check the weather i want to check the weather i look at my phone oh there's notification check the notification then you end up in a in a rabbit hole on a certain social media and then you're like oh never mind put
your phone down and then oh yeah the weather and you're back in and then you're in that same habit loop the trigger the initial trigger was maybe a notification that you received that made you look look at your phone.
So those are those things.
Let's move on then to item seven, which is the last item in part one here.
And I'm assuming I'm going to do part two.
We will see. So number seven, tech for children.
Today's children grow up surrounded by technology, often knowing how to swipe a tablet before they can read.
This opens up huge opportunities for learning and connection, but also creates challenges around screen time online safety and social development parents must decide how much access is healthy and how to protect their kids online so questions what do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of letting children have mobile phones do you know any examples of children who have phones or access to the internet and how do the parents manage it So one thing I should say is, like, I mean, I'm a parent.
I've got a daughter who's seven, and I've got a son who's now two.
It was his birthday not long ago.
And this is something I think about all the time.
And my wife and I both agree that we don't really want our kids to have phones until, you know, we want to leave it as late as possible.
And this is based on information that we've read about the impact that phones can have on kids.
And it's not just that they are sensitive and that it's not necessarily safe, but it's also because I've read reports about how mobile phones have caused a sort of mental health crisis among young people.
Maybe it's, maybe it's unrelated.
I don't know. But you can see in the data, the introduction of mobile phones, and a spike in instances of bad mental health among young people, and they happen around about the same time.
And it seems that the more kids have phones, the more mental health issues they have to deal with.
Maybe it's not causation, maybe one thing doesn't cause the the other, but it's a pretty interesting correlation in any case.
And so, yeah, I'm really concerned that phones are not good for kids.
And certainly social media and kids is not really a very good idea.
I think it's not very healthy for children's brains to be exposed to to the sort of subtle manipulation which happens with a lot of apps on phones and also the comparison culture which happens where kids look at images of people we think about images of the body attitudes that are spread children are very susceptible to social pressure and to an extent social media applications, that is their currency.
It is social pressure.
I think it's perhaps dangerous for kids to be exposed to that kind of thing at a young age.
It affects their mental development in the same way that, you know, you don't want your kids to be perhaps messing with drugs that will affect the way their brains work or other habits that might seriously affect the way their brains work you don't necessarily want them to be using phones that are manipulating triggering their their minds um but that's not to say there are only disadvantages of letting children have mobile phones of course there are advantages you think about the fact that it means that us parents will be able to be in touch with the children and they will be in touch with us
so that is convenient and possibly safe that it gives them a way to contact us if they're away from the house you know and also letting kids use phones tablets computers is obviously really important to help them develop digital literacy so that they can use confidently comfortably all these devices which are so important in our lives if the kids never use phones or computers they will grow up and they won't know how to use them and obviously that is really important in the professional world to be able to do that so there's that i know a couple of examples of kids who have phones or access to
the internet you know like i know i've got the parents at the school who i know who have kids who are a bit older and they allow them to have phones but But the phones have restricted Internet access.
So like flip phones, you know, going back to the old fashioned phones that don't they're not smartphones.
So they the kids can make calls.
They can send SMS text messages.
They might have limited access to WhatsApp, perhaps.
But essentially, it's a numeric keypad, like in the old days, you know, when we all had Nokia or Sony Ericsson phones.
they had numeric keyboards so you have to text by tapping the numbers a few times to create the letters and there's no internet access so that potentially allows the kids to have a certain amount of connectivity without exposing them to the dangers of the internet so there's that but yeah we talk about parental controls where the parents are able to limit what the device can do screen time limits maybe just setting limits in time limits you know telling your children setting a timer telling the children they can only use their phones within a certain time period age restrictions a lot of services
on the internet provide age restrictions so that under a certain age you can't use this site or whatever cyber safety is obviously a a really important thing because of course there are online predators who might try to groom children you know on social media grooming essentially means working on a child or a person and trying to manipulate their behavior in order to then allow something else to happen for example example you know you get online predators who will talk to children maybe pretending to be other children and they will be talking to them in a way that's like persuasive maybe preparing
them in a way to then allow them to manipulate them to allow them to meet in the real world where abuse might happen this is known as grooming obviously a huge concern digital literacy i talked about and online predators i mentioned just now many parents use parental controls to enforce screen time limits teaching digital literacy helps kids understand what's safe online unfortunately the internet can expose children to online predators if they are not careful it's a bit of a dark ending to this section but that's where we're going to end i guess what will be part one of this as i said before
you will find on the pdf a full vocab list of bits of vocab that have come up during the episode including the things i added on my list there although i didn't add that many during the episode i ended up just sort of like focusing on talking and making my points clear but i did explain a few things i'll put them all in the list so you'll find a full vocab list for this episode We'll also find memory recall questions, little questions to help you actually recall the vocab which has come up, which is a really important step.
It's something I always do in premium episodes to help you not only understand, notice, identify, know the meanings of words and phrases, but to be able to actually come up with them yourself, which is a really important step in you remembering, learning and then later using new vocab yourself.
self let me know your comments you can answer any of the questions you've heard me talk about in this episode um let me know if you'd like to see part two i mean i might i might actually have already recorded part two by the time i upload part one we'll see how we go um but hopefully you would be interested in getting part two of this too um hopefully you you genuinely learned some new bits of vocab for these subjects and that having listened to this episode and hopefully worked with the pdf a bit you'll be in a much better position to have conversations on these subjects in english but yes use
all those questions yourselves answer the questions yourselves don't feel like you have to give expert answers just give your own answers about your own lives and see if you can use some of the language that's come up, OK?
I think this is a chance for you to genuinely learn some very important vocab and to really expand your range of English for this subject.
Imagine next time you have to actually talk about this subject.
It's the sort of thing that could come up in a Cambridge exam like IELTS, but just generally in conversation.
hopefully after using this episode you'll be in a much better position to have a good solid meaningful uh an expressive conversation on this subject okay leave your comments in the comment section i'm always curious to get your responses but for this episode right here right now that is the end have a lovely morning afternoon evening or night wherever you are out there in podcast land And take care, look after yourselves and each other, and I will speak to you in the next one.
But for now, it's just time to say goodbye.
Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
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