Key Idea: Technology reshapes cognition and relationships — with real benefits and real costs, and hard-to-untangle causation.
Topic 4.3 at a glance
- Effects on cognition — Attention, memory and thinking can change with heavy tech use.
- Effects on relationships — Connection and support vs comparison and conflict.
- Studying it — Mostly correlational — hard to show tech causes the effect.
Cognition · Relationships · Method
IB-style questionDiscuss[15 marks]
Using the sources, to what extent does technology use affect a cognitive process such as attention?
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Why is tech research often correlational? You can't ethically assign people to heavy use — so causation is uncertain.
A cognitive effect of technology? Changes in attention or memory (e.g. reliance on search).
A social effect? Both support and social comparison / conflict.
Stress correlation ≠ causation for tech data, and discuss third variables and transferability in the [15] synthesis.