Is technology taking over our lives?

As I was walking to class today, everyone around me was on their phone or holding their phone in their hand, including me. Nowadays, people are becoming too reliant on their phones and other technology that they don’t realize what they are missing. We go to a beautiful school where walking to class isn’t too bad because you are surrounded by beautiful buildings, trees, and pathways, but everyone is too busy to notice all of this because they are too absorbed on their phones.

People are becoming too addicted to technology. One article states that “ The more advanced technology becomes, the more it seems to have control over our lives.” In other words, people no longer need to read the newspaper to check the weather, updates on the community, or see how their favorite sports team did over the weekend. They can just check twitter, Google it, or even ask Siri (Siri does have the answer for everything). There is no need to wait to get the newspaper when everything is on the Internet.

One negative effect of technology and social media taking over teenager’s livestechnology-300x282 is there is an increase in cyber bullying. This is becoming more popular because bullies find it easier to harass someone anonymously on the Internet than doing it face to face. A common thing cyber bullies do is “ Perpetrators anonymously or even posing as people their victims trust, terrorize individuals in front of their peers. The devastation of these online attacks can leave deep mental scars. Some victims have even been driven to suicide.” Cyber bullies do not understand the consequences that their actions have and the effect they have on the
victims. This increase is cyber bullying is all due to the increase in technology.

Another side effect of the increase use in technology is people’s physical activity will decrease. More people are spending time on their computers or watching TV, rather than playing sports outside or being active. Even when people are hanging with friends, they are just sitting around on their phones or surrounding the TV. Nobody is doing anything productive. One study
states that, “physical activity levels will decrease and sedentary time will increase by 2020 and 2030 if we continue at the rate we’re going.” This lack of physical activity will then lead to more people becoming obese and overweight.

Today’s society is becoming more and more addicted to technology that people are not appreciating what the world has to offer. Teenagers would rather watch Netflix or Facetime with their friends rather than hangout with their friends in person. I am guilty of doing all of these things. But, I am going to try and not to be too reliant on my phone or have separation anxiety from it when I am gone from it for too long. Everyone should try and use technology a little less and see that they will be okay without it.

5 thoughts on “Is technology taking over our lives?

  1. Pingback: 2/18 Unit One Final Summaries and Reflection – wrt205MirabitoUnit1

  2. Julia Hall

    I defiantly agree that technology is taking over our lives. I feel the younger generations are mostly effected by it (middle schoolers especially) because they were born into the beginning of the technology era and they were given ipads, phones, laptops at really young ages. I think its actually a little scary that we are becoming so dependent on technology. Soon enough we wont be doing anything for ourselves and everything will be accessible at our finger tips. The technology advantage, like you mentioned in the article, will most likely lead to more cyberbullying and lack of exercise which will cause many people to experience many mental and physical disabilities.

  3. zrl5024

    This is very true. With technology we have the capacity to instantly get the latest updates, gossip, and news, but I wonder why we can’t seem to wait and check these stories out later and enjoy the scenery and people around us first. Technology has a positive effect on our society in terms of development and growth for the future and making things easier. On the downside. it has negative implications as you have stated in this post. We need to be able to find a balance between using technology and not relying on it so much, instead of debating if it is great or not. Hopefully time will give us the answer.

  4. Amanda Strassler

    I completely agree with every negative aspect of media use that you discuss in your post. However, I would have liked to see more statistics and studies that back these points. You could narrow your topic by choosing one negative factor of internet use and backing up that specific argument with more detailed experiments and studies.

  5. Colby Kranz

    I really enjoyed reading this article as I myself have developed a dependency on my phone and computer. It is very interesting to think about what you mentioned in regards to FaceTime and how people are socially less inept because of how much we depend on modern technology. People in my high school were severely bullied via Facebook and instagram and it reminded me of a few of these stories below: http://nobullying.com/six-unforgettable-cyber-bullying-cases/
    I really enjoyed reading your article, very interesting and relatable!

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