Cord Cutting

What Is It?

Cord Cutting refers to the cancelling of satellite or cable television in favor of streaming services or other Internet media, for example: Youtube, Netflix, Disney Plus, etc. With every passing year, cord cutting becomes more frequent; at least a million people cancelled their cable or satellite tv in the past year. People, especially those who are younger, are moving over to watch shows on streaming services off of a smart tv or other device. Since younger generations are watching more tv off of streaming services, there are parents who would rather switch to watching shows off streaming services if there kids aren't going to watch cable or satellite television.

 

The Benefits

Cord cutting is beneficial for households that don't have the money for cable and satellite tv since the subscription to a streaming service is usually cheaper. Not only is it more affordable but streaming also allows viewers to watch whatever show they're interested in on any of their devices with internet. Streaming allows for users to watch any episode of the shows available at any time unlike cable or satellite tv that only allows you to watch an episode of a show when it airs or if you decide to record it beforehand. Streaming services also allow for users to watch shows anywhere because they can be put on to mobile devices and watched at anytime. This feature specifically made it so easy for people to share their streaming service accounts to save money with friends that Netflix had to just enact a new rule that stated that any device that is logged into an account must visit the "home" location at least once a month to renew account validity.

Some Drawbacks

One of the drawbacks however of streaming services is their lack of news accessibility. Since most streaming services don't have included live television, it is hard for those who only use streaming services to get information on their regional news. For those who do want to still experience part live television to see the news on streaming services, they usually need to pay an extra fee or provide their cable/satellite tv provider (which means they're not cord cutting). Another drawback has been the competitions held between cable and satellite tv against different streaming services. One recent example of this is Disney Vs Spectrum that saw Disney blocking 15 million of Spectrum's users from watching ESPN or ABC. Disney ended up making a deal with Spectrum to allow the users to be able to watch those channels as part of a package deal with ESPN+ and Disney+.

What Our Future Might Be

For the foreseeable future, this means that cable and satellite tv could be dead within a couple of years. In order to keep making the same revenue, cable/satellite tv has starting adding more commercials in between shows. Ultimately this has caused even more cord cutting than there was before because people don't have the attention spans anymore to wait for their favorite show in-between advertisements. Currently, live event broadcasting is one of the only things keeping cable and satellite television alive as the recent Super Bowl was still watched by 90% on live tv.

Privacy, Online or Off

Privacy Issues

Ever since the explosion of the Internet and social media, businesses have started to keep track of our personal browsing data so that they can use it for their own personal gain. Anytime you remember talking about something or searching something up and then soon after see some form of advertisement about said thing, that is them using our data. Even the creators of Google who initially did not want to breach anyone's privacy eventually succumbed to using people's data in order to save their company. Companies like Google and Facebook have come under fire many times in recent years over possible misuses of data.

What Should the Government Do?

The government, if not already, should be keeping more tabs on the businesses that are using and selling our private data. The American government has been putting all the pressure on China over TikTok using our data and possibly spying on us. Most of their claims were based on China possibly trying to spread misinformation with TikTok and use our data against us. Personally, I have mixed feeling on whether or not we should ban TikTok, what I would like to see is the government going against businesses on our own turf that are misusing our data. My fear is that the government may possibly be working with these companies because they too want to use our data for their own personal gain.

What Can We Do?

One way that we can protect ourselves from invasions of our privacy is to educate ourselves in how our data is being used. Knowing how these companies take our data and sell it off to other companies can help us to understand ways of avoiding that from happening. When an application asks you if you want to get personalized advertisements, it is asking if you want to let it use your data to give you more of what you might like at the cost of your privacy. Limiting our social media use and in general technology use will allow us to control how much information these companies are getting from us. Limiting our technology use also might allow us to become more personable and interact with those we care about more face to face instead of texting each other in the same room.

Diffusion of Innovations

Diffusion Theory with Facebook

Diffusion Theory is split into five separate groups of people: Innovator/Pioneers, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards. Facebook's initial innovator would be Mark Zuckerberg, who created it after his temporary student rating website, Facemash, went viral. His goal was to connect college students together easily by allowing them to post a wall of information about themselves. Facebook was initially released only to Harvard university and then to a couple other ivy league universities so most of it is early adopters came from those schools. As time went on, Facebook become more and more open to the public until eventually it became fully public to anyone over thirteen years old. Once Facebook was introduced to the public, the early majority joined the website, as it was gaining more and more features to connect people together. Facebook allowed its users to post pictures of what was going on in their lives and tag people who they wanted to either look at their post or tag someone who was in the photo itself. 

The Issues with Facebook

There were and still are, a lot of people who are skeptic about Facebook because they believe that online connections are making people less sociable offline. It is no surprise that the late majority took so long to join it because they were not only mental health related issues associated with Facebook but also privacy issues. Facebook stores all the data that you put into it, every time you click on ad or on a page for too long, it stores how that information as data that can be sold out to third parties. Many promises were made from Zuckerberg himself that peoples data was protected and many people did not care or know enough in the first place for that to affect them. While Facebook is still the most popular social media in the world, there are still those laggards who are worried about their data or do not care enough about Facebook to want to join it. They may benefit from keeping up with those they care about by joining Facebook but if they already contact those people and know what is going on in their life then they do not really need it.