#technologythoughts

Oh gosh.

I’m in Digital Media and Society class and we are discussing internet/smartphone addiction. We’re talking about the implications and I personally believe many adults, including our teacher, can be very dramatic when it comes to digital addiction. This would almost always be my view, that yes times are changing and we are adapting to that, but no one has that lack of self control to not be able to exist without a phone.

I completely believe that as technology advances, we as humans will use it because it makes our lives easier and more efficient. Besides, who wouldn’t want to get 150% of work done in a day when we used to only be able to achieve 100% completion. But I never really thought that technology would rule over us as humans because we created it and we are still the creator, allowing it to exist.

We just watched a video in class of a baby looking at a magazine online and knowing how to navigate it: turning the page, zooming in, etc. Then the baby was given a magazine in person and didn’t know how to physically open the magazine and turn the pages. The baby even tried to zoom in by pinching the page and expanding.

There was a pit in my stomach after watching this video. It is quite sad to see this. Especially to see a medium that I love so much, fashion magazines, fading away in relevance. The only glimmer of hope I have after this video is realizing that it’s not the baby’s fault, it’s her parents’ fault. How could you introduce your baby so much to smartphones in the first few months of their life that they understand how to swipe, how to zoom in, etc. before they even know how to use that word in a sentence? Shocking. Disappointing.

You see, it’s not the advancement of technology that worries me, it’s the humans using it. It’s the irresponsibility of individuals utilizing and abusing this technology while failing to realize that everything must be used in moderation; that if something harms your relationships, use it less.