Loss Stories

We began our survey by asking participants to recall the three worst technology-related harms they had experienced:

For the first three questions, please recall the three worst technology-related harms or losses you have experienced. Take your time! These three questions may take half of the time budgeted to complete the survey.

Describe the most harmful technology-related harm or loss you have experienced:

Describe the second-most harmful technology-related harm or loss you have experienced:

Describe the third-most harmful technology-related harm or loss you have experienced:

Participant 1

I have been harassed online for being transgender
Constant exposure to news media has driven me to episodes of depression multiple times
I lose time with friends due to their and my online media consumption habits

Participant 2

Last year, I updated my iPhone without backing it up first. I had never had an issue before and didn't think anything of it that time. I ended up getting locked out of my phone and using losing years worth or photos and videos of my family / kids. I was very upset about this and there was nothing that I could do to get this information back. My cell phone provider was able to get me logged back into my phone after a few hours. Needless to say, I have never made that mistake again.
Several years ago I lost everything on my work computer due to it being old and crashing. I was a teacher at the time and lost a lot of students information, answer keys to tests, tests already prepared and other learning materials that I needed for lessons. I had to use my personal computer to redo test materials and lesson plans while I waited for a replacement.
Just recently my living room tv went out. While is wasn't incredibly devastating, I still had to spend money on getting a new one, because the part that needed replacing on the broken was wasn't worth spending the money to fix. I ended up losing login information, which as you can imagine is a hassle setting up on a new tv.

Participant 3

When I was in middle school I was cyber bullied through kik messenger and harassed by a person creating multiple accounts.
I was groomed as a young child by adults on kik, Facebook messenger, and websites like Omegle.
A old friend left negative and harassing comments under my posts on instagram

Participant 4

I had a situation where my computer updated and something went wrong and it wiped my drive clean and I was unable to retrieve my files.
I had a USB drive with lots of important documents for school and I lost it and had to start over.
I lost a camera that had many pictures of a recent trip I took to a place that I would likely never visit again

Participant 5

had sensitive information leaked online
was scammed over the internet
was hurt by and lost friends i met through the internet

Participant 6

The most harmful technology-related harm I’ve experienced was being relentlessly bullied for years by my boyfriend’s ex. She spent all of her time rallying people against me and harassing me anonymously even though we only met once. It took me a long time to stop caring about it and start ignoring her messages.
The second most harmful technology related hard I experienced was losing my friend group during an argument. We had a disagreement about something stupid that I can’t even remember and for a few weeks they all stopped talking to me and talked about me behind my back.
The third most harmful technology related harm I had experienced was being harassed by girls from my high school on Facebook. They would post pictures of me and fake messages from me to make me look bad to our mutual friends

Participant 7

Self checkouts had 10% of the thrift store have to be laid off. i was one of them, as one of the senior employees who had high pay
I lost a lot of money on crypto that i can't tell anyone about. they still think i have a savings
Car crash killed a friend of mine.

Participant 8

Credit card stolen, I had little cash and was late on my bills.
Phone died when alarm was set. Slept through work.
My attention span is significantly worse.

Participant 9

Lagging ness in apps or games, it looks horrible, slows you down and sometimes loses where you in the app or game.
When the app can't function so my phone says, so and so isn't responding do you want to close it.
When it does something you didn't want it to.

Participant 10

As I began undergrad, my Dell laptop died and was unusable. I began undergrad in 2017, so it was very technology centric at that time, and needed to spend hundred's of dollars to get a new one.
When studying for my graduate degree, we lost an entire presentation that we spent the semester working on. Suddenly, no one had access to the presentation and we had to redo it all.
Having my phone break was extremely inconvenient, as iPhones cost a large amount of money.

Participant 11

When I was working on an essay on microsoft word, my computer crashed, which resulted in me losing hours of progress.
When I was purchasing an item on amazon, I was unable to checkout, resulting in me pressing the button multiple times. When I checked again, there were multiple purchases on my account, but I was able to cancel them.
There was a power outage in my neighborhood for about twenty minutes that resulted in me being unable to open the garage door.

Participant 12

I lost my bank information and someone changed the password.
I got harassed by random people on the internet for sharing a certain view point.
Spam callers have got my information from off the internet and constantly call me.

Participant 13

In the past, I had a former romantic partner login to one of my social media accounts to cause personal harm to myself. She did this by deleting all my pictures, and she also posted to others as it was myself doing the typing.
I've had passwords stolen via connections I've had on the internet. Although I noticed due two two step verification processes, I still had to change all my passwords. Also, I was still worried about what else the person could get into.
I've forgotten a seed phrase for a crypto wallet I once had. For security concerns, I kept the password on a thumb drive in my personal possession. My kid borrowed my thumb drive and erased everything on it including my seed phrase.

Participant 14

My identities and passwords were stolen. This caused me great harm and cost me money due to them having my bank account information.
My login for my work account was hacked. I spent the next two days resetting everything. I lost a lot of backups of non replaceable material.
The updates that were scheduled for my system completely wiped my harddrive. This was a loss of picture and document memories.

Participant 15

The worst harmful technology-related harm I've experienced was probably a time where I was frequently active on social media for a fandom and was involved with a group on twitter who shared the same interest. We would often produce fanworks together and one time a mutual on the platform published something that recieved a lot of backlash and gotten extremely high views and reposts. This ended up affecting the entire friend group including myself as we received harmful reposts and replies for an entire week to the point where some friends had to delete their accounts.
The second most harmful experience due to technology was when my sleep schedule ended up extremely abnormal due to an addiction to a video game I had. I would set timers throughout the day to login for rewards and it was really negative on my health since it disrupted my sleep cycles severely.
The third most harmful technology related experience was when I was working on a presentation for school on my laptop which for some reason when I uploaded the file for submission in my class' website, the file contents weren't showing up. This caused me a lot of distress since i ended up having to redo the file and had to submit the assignment past the due date.

Participant 16

The more harmful loss experience due to faulty technology was during winter when the power went out and the travel on the roadway was too treacherous to venture outside.
The second-most harmful was losing satellite service while using GPS when driving in another State.
The third-most harmful was losing my PC to the blue screen of death.

Participant 17

I have lost countless hours of my life using my phone to addictively scroll through the internet or play games.
I lost over a thousand dollars because of a business venture where I was scammed into purchasing computers that were not in the advertised condition.
I lost around a hundred dollars buying stocks during the gamestop craze.

Participant 18

Loss of my personal information via hacks or information phishing by the dark web.
Losing my phone and not knowing who could be accessing my private and personal information stored in the phone.
Someone I thought I could trust accessing my phone and looking at my private information.

Participant 19

For many years I used an external har-drive to keep all of my files. Pictures, videos, movies, personal files, music etc. We were sold the bill of goods that digital is forever and I believed that what I was doing was preserving my memories in the best way possible. But then the day came when that harddrive never booted up again, it was corrupted. And I lost all everything including my faith in the systems.
Loss of time. Many of these technologies we have implemented ofver the past, say decasde, are supposed to be time saving. But the reality is that it takes more time to figure and implement the constant changing and evolution of it all. Take the telephone for instance. 20 years ago you had a phone number for a person, you called it, and talked about something. Today a phone number may or may not exist. It may be a landline in use only to get a billing bundle and not in actual use by the household. Some cell phone users only text, no talking on the phone. There are too many different messaging services and you must figure out which one to use for each person you need to contact. Overall not time saving at all.
The right to be nobody is extremely hard to follow through with. The recording and archiving of everything that happens in the modern world leads to destruction of people's autonomony.

Participant 20

We have this software we normally use at work to coordinate our daily activities. So i did just that and from nowhere, all data entered for that day disappeared and could not be traced. Luckily, i had a hard copy i wrote down before doing the entries.
I once used this BP apparatus and it was just too tight which is very bad.
An aircooler is sometimes that harmful because whenever i use it, i tend to feel sick.

Participant 21

I lost a progress in a story I was writing when my tablet shut down. It was over 5 thousand words and I really enjoyed the story. I had it on an app that could sync to the internet, but it didn't have a chance to sync before it died.
I lost a story I wrote when I lost my gmail account due to me creating an account before I was 13. When the age policy came into play, they shut down my access.
I lost digital files when my Google Drive didn't sync properly and I deleted the originals.

Participant 22

Losing iPod with extensive journal entries on it.
Losing iTunes library of all music.
Losing photos on old hard drive.

Participant 23

I used to use a low quality washing machine that repeatedly ruined my clothing.
My current car sometimes auto brakes in unnecessary situations, such as for street plates. It is potentially dangerous and often caused minor whiplash.
The humidifier I purchased stopped working after only 2 seasons of use.

Participant 24

When my address was posted online
When people made an account to bully me
When I got anonymous hate messages

Participant 25

At one point during the work day my motherboard on my home PC stopped working when I was working from home. This is a rather costly fix
An external hard drive that I had many files on crashed suddenly and I did not have a backup.
While building a computer a long time ago I was mildly electrocuted

Participant 26

Dropped my phone down a small hole full of water.
Dropped a laptop, broke the screen. Couldn't get it repaired affordably.
Expensive monitor stopped working for no known reason.

Participant 27

During the Colorado fires of the summer of 2020, my home lost cell signal for most of the summer due to both the fires and the local towers being overwhelmed by the amount of firefighters and other emergency professionals in the area. As we were rural and without TV, it severely limited the amount of information we had about the fires and what they were doing. Thankfully the fires never got to us, but if they had we likely wouldn't have had much, if any, warning.
My attention span. Where did it go? Down the TikTok rabbit hole, that's where.
The loss of privacy due to always worrying about being recorded in public.

Participant 28

I have wasted a lot of time mindlessly scrolling on reddit
Blue light keeping me up at night
Y2K not happening

Participant 29

spilled water on my laptop and destroyed it
dropped my phone into a river
cracked lcd screen

Participant 30

Loss of all emails with no way of getting them back.
My email being found on the dark web.
Credit card fraud.

Participant 31

After writing a 10 page essay on several films we watched in class, my essay was marked as ""written by AI"". I got a 0 for the assignment and didn't get to argue or prove myself. It brought my grade from an A to a D. I wrote the whole essay in Google Docs, so it was very easy to prove I wrote it, but I never got the chance
My microphone was on during a Zoom meeting a few years ago. I did not realize this and commented on how the Professor was being a ""rude son of a bitch"". Needless to say, I got kicked from the meeting and a firm email from the Professor.
My stepdad was recommended a dose of Testosterone from an algorithm that was NEARLY fatal. Scariest shit ever

Participant 32

Someone hacked into my stash account and stole my funds in the account. I was able to get everything back but it was a scary situation.
Getting notifications that your email is hacked.
Getting spam messages on your phone via text.

Participant 33

My cellphone because I have lost so much time and lost so much of myself into my phone. I feel like a shell. I'm addicted and have no idea how to entertain myself
TV. Same reasons I said for cellphone. I can thankfully turn off the TV for a little bit but so hard to put down my phone
Cryptocurrency, I lost so much money.

Participant 34

I've been harassed on social media by TERFs for being trans and talking about my top surgery experiences.
Things like Tiktok have at times increased my depressive and anxious mental health but are still difficult to give up.
Sometimes I see violent things online unexpectedly or encounter someone's traumatic story that I wish I could have avoided.

Participant 35

I bought a lithium powered power bank to charge my phone. I used it for a few week then one day it started smoking and went on fire. I had in in my pocket so I reached in and threw it. It burned my jacked and hand.
We replaced our water heater a few years ago. We picked the newest model and at the time it seemed really good. Well after 4 years it failed and flooded our basement. Ruined our washer and dryer alone with countless other items.
This is easy, the good ol' laptop. My laptop was fairly new. I had a lot of stuff on it like taxes, photos, music. I always did a backup every few months. Of course my laptop's hard drive died a week before I was going to do a back-up. I lots our Christmas images.

Participant 36

Spending way too much time browsing social media pages online.
Too easy to make the majority of purchases online, and not visiting & supporting local stores in my community more.
All my important information and files are on my computer, and when my computer crashed, the files & documents could not be retrieved.

Participant 37

My smartphone was hacked and I suffered severe identity theft as a result.
One time I left my phone in an uber and was unable to retrieve my phone timely due to I had to access the app on the phone or access email through my phone to contact uber to report the loss. I ended up having to buy another phone to do so.
My online turbotax account was compromised.

Participant 38

I found out via accidental voicemail and Facebook that my father was dating someone only a couple of weeks after he was asked to temporarily leave the home because his verbal and emotional abuse was causing my sister to go to the hospital because she was threatening to kill herself.
Best friend (at the time) and roommate told me that she was kicking me out of her house that I was renting for the upcoming school year via text. Not only is this hurtful as someone who was supposed to be my friend but it also completely screwed me over because I had nowhere to live.
Being exposed to overly graphic content, especially for my age (e.g. the terrorist beheading video).

Participant 39

I was asleep one morning in my apartment. The tenant who lived in the apartment below me did not extinguish their cigarette before leaving the house, causing their apartment to catch on fire. I was reliant on smoke detectors in my apartment to go off when smoke was detected to alert me, but they did not go off at all. I was asleep and inhaling smoke for about 45 minutes before the fire department broke into my apartment to wake me up. I suffered extreme emotional trauma, as well as physical side effects.
My laptop crashed while I was working on a very important project in graduate school, leaving the entire file which took weeks of work corrupted.
My phone alarm did not wake me up on time to see a show with my mom so I missed it.

Participant 40

Well, when I was like 18 , me and my girl were arguing, and then while we were Fighting, I got on Facebook and said a bunch of nasty things about her. So she left me and my family hated her after.
When I was in middle school, and I posted some negative things about the administration, and someone told on me . I got suspended from school for 2 days.
When I lost my cell phone for the a millionth time

Participant 41

I fell victim to a scam that was run over the internet. They were offering a good if you backed their funding. They took all the money and then never delivered the good. It ended up costing me about $700.
I work on computers all day long and if I do not wear blue light reducing glasses then I end up with a headache by the end of the work day.
There was another scam that ended up costing me quite a bit as well. They said they were offering me a job to do some menial tasks. I completed all the tasks and didn't go out to find any other work because I thought I would be payed for the tasks I was completing. It turns out it was just a scam and I never got paid and waisted a lot of time not working a real job.

Participant 42

I had a bank account hacked and emptied of my savings. The loss was not recoverable and was permanent.
I was using a power tool that was supposed to be able to detect an improper or difficult use and shut down. It did not, and I suffered a significant cut on my arm.
I was in a car accident where airbags malfunctioned and did not deploy. Fortunately, the impact was not significant, but I was still bruised in the accident.

Participant 43

Having my banking information stolen.
Having a pc ruined due to a virus infection.
Having my information sold without proper consent.

Participant 44

One of the most harmful tech related harm I have experienced is through a co-dependent partner who I realized psychologically bullied me online through voice calls, location based services, and messaging apps while gas lighting and manipulating the way I think and how I feel on an minute to minute basis. It created a need to carry my phone with me where ever I went and no matter the time of day or night.
Doom scrolling is another tech related harm I have noticed, warranting me to put time limits on my apps because it depletes my energy doing nothing with my body as I rot in my bed or on the couch.
False information through social media on technology, I feel like more than ever I have to sift through what is reality and what isn't, what I believe might be propaganda and what isn't and it has definitely been straining on my perception of many news outlets.

Participant 45

Headphones breaking apart
Air mattress not blowing up
Xbox not operating correctly

Participant 46

The most harmful tech related harm I experienced was getting lost in the wilderness because I was relying on my phone. I had gone for an unplanned walk in a national forest and was using the map on my phone as a guide. I didn't have any food or water with me, as I wasn't planning on being out there very long at all. But i had jumped across a small creek, and my phone fell right into the water and stopped working. I ended up getting turned around and panicking, in the middle of the wilderness without any supplies. I did eventually manage to find my way back to the camp I was staying at, thankfully.
The second most harmful tech related harm was when my brother got into an accident and was in the hospital. I was staying at a friend's house where I didn't have cell reception, so it was almost ten hours later that I got all the frantic messages from my family about my brother.
The third one is pretty basic, but a loss nonetheless. I used to keep a lot of my digital pictures on an online image hosting site. I moved around a lot back then, so this was an easy solution for me. I eventually forgot the password to the site, and no longer had access to the email I had used for it, so I lost hundreds of old pictures. Not the worst thing in the world, but it was very sad for me.

Participant 47

Way back my friends used to actually call me on the phone and talk to me. Now at most they'll text or make a post on Facebook to keep in touch which just isn't the same.
As someone who doesn't drive and mostly pays for stuff in cash covid seemed to have accelerated there being more things that require a car or a non cash payment. Even now sometimes I'll go to a fast food restaurant and they'll have their lobby locked even though it's supposed to be open.
Self checkouts are replacing cashiers and I don't like it. They are confusing to use and take too long if you are buying more than a few things. It's easier to get checked out by a cashier.

Participant 48

i was stalked online by a man who was in one of my classes. he kept on making different usernames and using a vpn to harass and threaten me, even sending candid pictures that included me. the police wouldn't do anything other than just take a report, it's just words and you're in public places in those pictures so there's nothing that can be done
a family member i had no contact with, but who my parents still saw on a rare occasion had accessed the shared computer. i had saved my passwords and had no login password since i had stopped using it after i got my own laptop. he then gossiped to the family the information he had learned, including my therapy stuff
my harddrive corrupted and i had a semester long final paper on there and it was like a week before it was due. the cloud saved one i had accidentally opened a way earlier one so i lost months of work.

Participant 49

I lost a lot of information on my phone when a loved one broke my phone on purpose.
I dropped my old iPhone when I was dancing and it fell on the floor.
My laptop with so many memories of my son stopped working and I never saved those files.

Participant 50

he benefits of technology are genuinely incredible, but there can be too much of a good thing. Our hyperconnectivity means we may have difficulty disconnecting or creating space to unwind. That can lead to feelings of stress or exhaustion and make it harder to truly relax when we need that rest.
excessive screen time can lead to health issues such as eye strain, poor posture, and sedentary behavior. Cybersecurity threats, including hacking, identity theft, and privacy breaches, are also significant negative impacts of computer use.cntinusly see more timing
dvancements in technology allow people to be more connected than ever, but this may come at a price. Overuse of social media and mobile devices have been linked to eyestrain, difficulty focusing on other tasks, and depression