Discussion On Whether People Are Overly Dependent On Technology
In modern society, technology is used significantly. Most people can argue that technology is used for many positive and advancing uses such as: GPS, communicating, taking pictures, and buying or selling things; however, technology also has many downfalls attached to it as well. One of those pitfalls is the human dependence upon devices, especially cell phones. If technology were to be lost, would people be able to survive? Technology is a huge distraction in our lives, especially when we should be focused on something else. It makes us stay up at night doing useless things when we should be sleeping such as playing video games or seeing what our friends are posting online. We rely so much on cell phones, tablets, and laptops that without them people would be lost. Their time would be opened up more, and they would be misplaced from the cultural norm that we have created for ourselves.
Technology also causes harm to us. Even if you do not think so, the facts do not lie. Distracted driving was responsible for 3,477 total deaths, 3,196 fatal car wrecks, and 391,000 injuries in 2015 alone. Studies show that “All together averaging 0. 4 miles of staring at a screen for every 11 miles driven”. That's basically saying you are driving almost half a mile with your eyes closed. While you are driving and your phone goes off because your best friend sent you a picture of what they are eating, you want to look at it and risk losing control of your vehicle and hitting something or someone that you didn't see. Technology makes teenagers lack sleep. Lack of sleep can cause medical problems such as depression, sleep apnea, hormone imbalances, and many more chronic illnesses.
“Watching television is the most popular activity (76%) for adolescents in the hour before bedtime, while surfing the internet/instant-messaging (44%) and talking on the phone (40%) are close behind”. We need sleep to refresh our body for the next day. If we sleep less, then we feel slow and do not perform to the best of our ability. If adolescents stay up late to waste time on video games or checking social media, their actions have the consequence of going to bed at an exponentially later hour. As an example: if a teenager stays awake until 4AM playing on a game console and then chooses to go to bed, if they get the healthy, recommended amount of sleep - eight hours - then they will not wake up until 12 in the afternoon the next day. On school days, this can be very dangerous to do. A student will have to interrupt the cycle of sleep to wake up and get ready for there day at school.
For high schoolers, this can add on to the danger. Cutting into there short sleep time like this “is a dangerous thing, especially for adolescents whose brains are still developing. The poll found that adolescents who had four or more technological devices in their bedrooms were almost twice as likely to fall asleep in school and while doing homework”. Again, adding on: many high schoolers who drive, it can be very dangerous to do this as well. Driving while drowsy, “causes more than 100,000 police-reported crashes, 71,000 injuries and 1,550 deaths each year”. The scariest thing is that without our phones we feel naked. “Technology addiction is a reality these days, with people checking their emails and text messages as much as 30 to 40 times an hour. I know people who jokingly refer to their Blackberrys as “Crackberrys” because checking them is so addictive. ” If we were to lose our phones we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves because we use them for everything. We would feel lost.
We have lost the ability to do many things that we have technology do for us. Humans are becoming half man, half machine cyborgs that are losing more of our human half intelligence because any problem we have we just look it up with our machine half, the cell phone, instead of trying to figure it out. I am not saying that all technology is bad though. For example; brand new electric cars are safer, more efficient, and better for the environment.
On top of all of this, a computer makes it easier to research for a project or paper, much like this one I am writing right now. All the things that technology can do, we can do without it. It just makes our life easier by allowing us to do less work. For research instead of going online and just asking the question, I could go to a library and find a book about my problem and then still end up learning about the subject. In life, the human populis has become extraordinarily underactive due to our overuse of technology.
Works Cited
- DMV. org Articles. (2018). Deadly Distracted Driving Stats | DMV. ORG. [online] Available at: https://www. dmv. org/articles/death-by-text-message-stats-show-how-technology-is-killing-us/ [Accessed 19 Jan. 2018].
- Kirschner, Chanie. “7 Signs We Are Too Dependent on Technology. ” MNN - Mother Nature Network, Mother Nature Network, 5 June 2017, www. mnn. com/green-tech/gadgets-electronics/stories/7-signs-we-are-too-dependent-on-technology. [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].
- Technology Takes Its Toll on Teen Sleep, Aspen Education Group, [online] Available at:www. bing. com/cr?IG=525D32D412D241369ED04375E090D802&CID=283020671A4E60FA07CB2BE51BE161F3&rd=1&h=jfi7oikDvI-Liy5vJwfKlvhuykwDclwF56SuEudHSvk&v=1&r=http%3a%2f%2faspeneducation. crchealth. com%2farticle-teen-sleeping%2f&p=DevEx,5052. 1. [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].
