Technology, in essence, has become the demise of today’s intelligence. The shine and dazzle of new products is doing exactly what it’s suppose to do- distract. On the surface, this technological era has brought this world leaps and bounds further in intelligence-or has it? The loss of self esteem, the inability to pay attention, and the damage to the brain's abilities aren’t so glamorous. Is technology making the world dumber?
Many individuals claim technology is how they connect-or rather “keep in touch”- with others; however, is this communication healthy? Emailing, texting, Tweeting, blogging, posting, and favoriting has become the focus of the modern world. According to the Wilson Quarterly, these social media outlets “encourage more efficient and instantaneous affirmation or rejection of our feelings”. In other words, having the capability to immediately receive or not receive feedback can have a negative influence on one’s self-esteem. The Quarterly further goes on to explain how this instantaneous rebuttal creates “...social anxiety caused by the public nature of so many of our communications”. If technology is as great as it seems, then there wouldn’t be uneasiness among the public. This need for communication is no longer made to keep in touch with others, but rather a way to gain acceptance from one’s peers. Social media has become a huge part in this generations everyday lives, and this connection is taking its toll when looking at how “...the more time and more ‘friends’ people had on Facebook, the more likely they were to agree with the statement that others had better, happier lives than they did, and the less likely they were to believe that life is fair” (The Wilson Quarterly). Without a doubt, technology has ma...
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...engulfs one’s entire being, becomes part of every thought, and changes outlooks on life, then technology is no longer “wonderful”. The overabundant use of social media, and technology as a whole, has become the downfall of this generation.
Works Cited
Carr, Nicholas. How the Internet is Making us stupid. 6 May 2014. Web
Electronic intimacy: friendships that were once maintained with the rudimentary technology of pen and paper are now reinforced 24/7 with the stroke of a few keys. A longtime letter writer reflects on what has been gained and lost. The Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2012. 6 May 2014. Web.
Neulieb, Christine. “Changing our minds: virtue ethics for a digital age.” Commonweal 137.22 (2010): 15+. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. 6 May 2014.Web.
Robison, John Elder. “Is Technology Making Us Dumber?”. My Life With Aspergers, November 30, 2009. 6 May 2014. Web.
Nicholas Carr wrote ‘How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds’ published in the Wall Street Journal in 2017. Carr believes that as the brain becomes reliant on smartphones the intellect diminishes.
People feel they are on top of the world due to the numerous friends that they have on their Facebook page. Having Facebook friends provides them with a sense of acceptance they had never experienced. These experiences are a gateway to a stream of emotions that has the potential to harm as well as to help. Social media has helped to emotionally feel connected and is an easy and efficient way to stay in contact with family and friends; however, it is harmful when it is the culprit for facilitating and fueling arguments and unhealthy relationships. “As the Danish academic Anders Colding-Jorgensen argues: ‘We should no longer see the internet as a post office where information is sent back and forth, but rather as an openarena for our identity and self-pro...
Technology has advanced a lot and has been greatly impacting our lives since the Industrial Revolution. The appearance of the mobile phone, the computer, and the tablets have all changed our ability to communicate with people around the world. Although technologies have greatly improved our lifestyle, they have brought many negative effects on our relationships and happiness as well, for instance distorting people's views on one another and bringing more loneliness to people's lives. Many people believe that benefited by social media platforms such as Facebook, it is now not necessary to talk to someone in person in order to effectively communicate with one and know one’s life. Others, however, believe that technology alone cannot replace
Albert Einstein once said, “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” This quote is fully representative of society today. It has distracted us from..... One second my best friend just texted me… Ok what was I saying?.. Oh right; It has distracted us from our studies, our loved ones, and even our driving. Technology is making us less intelligent, oblivious to our surroundings, and antisocial.
The ability for people to surround themselves with the familiarity of their comfort place by using their technology is appealing because it rarely provides the user with something unexpected or unfamiliar. By constantly being cut off from personal interactions and new experiences because of a technological device. A generation with substandard social abilities is being groomed. If we do not have to face reality by experiencing new things, making personal relationships, and problem solving, then we will never be able to function as Humans. Technology hinders personal communication, which negatively impacts our lives. Although “our culture heralds the Internet as a technological wonder, there are suggestions that Internet use has a negative influence on individuals and their social skills,” (article 1) Data shows that those who use the Internet frequently spend over 100 minutes less time with...
“I didn't know what Facebook was, and now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time –Betty White (“Betty White Quotes,” 2014, para. 1).” This quote can be interpreted to fit with several of the social media avenues that many people spend their time on. Day in and day out people post, tweet, share, and pin countless times throughout the world. These different forms of communication were first created for an easier way for people to connect with others. Yet now, so much time is spent on these social sites that it has warped the interactive part and is causing more damage than good. Many are growing a desire and are living for the amount of “likes” they can receive on a post or how many re-tweets they can generate. Instead of going to these outlets to participate in a partial portion of their social lives, people are filling that time with the technological aspect of communication. As White said, this can become an inordinate amount of wasted time and can ultimately grow into further damaging circumstances. These different social media channels can cause emotional harm through disparaging the relationship between friends, conjuring of a narcissistic personality, and the retrogradation of ones self-esteem.
Is technology making us smarter or dumber? With the increase in the use of smartphones and autocorrect technology for the past ten years, the eras of the dictionary are over. These days, corrections are made with a mindless click of a button, which does not allow the users think themselves. Individuals have a tendency to use spell check more often than actually knowing how to spell a word, or how to use grammar correctly.
Social networking has increasingly had a huge impact on society. Technology has opened the door to a vast amount of information and to the ability to relay that information to practically anybody at anytime and anywhere. People are constantly checking their email, updating their status on Facebook, sending tweets on Twitter, instant messaging, and texting. The debate of whether the use of social networking is a negative or positive aspect is a continuous one. In the case of Steven Pinker, his essay “Mind over Mass Media” argues that media technologies have a positive effect on mental development. In contrast, Sherry Turkle’s essay “Connectivity and Its Discontents” asserts that technology has a negative effect on interpersonal relationships. Although Pinker makes many excellent points on how technology is improving intelligence and Turkle provides exceptional ideas of how technology is damaging to relationships, neither Pinker nor Turkle provides the best answer to this question due to their lack of credibility and inclusion of logical fallacies. Instead, we should, while aware of the risks and dangers of social networking, use the Internet to its full potential.
“Social media, a web-based and mobile technology, has turned communication into a social dialogue, and dominates the younger generation and their culture. As of 2010, Generation Y now outnumbers Baby Boomers, and 96% of Gen Y has joined a social network” (Qualman 1). Social media now accounts for the number one use of the Internet, and this percentage is rising bigger every day (Qualman). As a consequence, people are becoming more reliant on social media, which has a led to a number of advantageous as well as unfavorable effects. The world is more connected today than it has ever been in the past, and this is all because of growth in technology. What has yet to be determined though
There used to be a time where students would have the responsibility of learning the material at hand by using their memories instead of depending on technology. Now, calculators do all the hard math problems, spell check takes care of grammar, and books are becoming fossils because who needs a book for research when you can have a siri? Kids used to be outside everyday playing sports or riding bikes, but now their eyes are attached to their video games, while their butts are glued to the couch. And don`t forget that in order to get a date people actually had to talk to each other face to face instead of relying on internet dating services or apps like Tinder. It`s hard to believe isn`t it? Society has become so dependent on technology that it wouldn`t know how to function without it. So the question at hand is, is smarter technology making us dumber? In this paper, the three perspectives being observed are how technology is depriving society of the ability to be mentally independent, how it is making people incapable to have a physical relationship with each other, and how people are being pushed into having an unhealthy lifestyle because of it.
“According to Cornell University's Steven Strogatz, social media sites can make it more difficult for us to distinguish between the meaningful relationships we foster in the real world, and the numerous casual relationships formed through social media” (Jung, 2016). It is not a shocking fact when you notice that it requires much less energy to just sit around and text. It sounds innocent at first but when you realize that people are now spending hours and hours on their screens some concern
Social networking is doing more harm than good in society, if traditional and personal interactions continue to be replaced with conversations through online networking sites, it won’t be long before they are perceived as the ‘norm’. Traditional methods of interaction will continue to be at risk if the effects of social media are not realised. Social networking sites were created as a means of making it easier for individuals to communicate in a timely and efficient manner, they were not created to take over face-to-face communications altogether. The constant use of online networking is doing more harm than good not only individually, similarly through the community
Furthermore, browsing sites such as Facebook may lead to low morale, as people begin to measure their self-worth with the amount of “likes” they receive. Ironically, although social media sites boast their ability to connect people, they mainly separate society even more as people become isolated behind their screens. Social media is damaging to a person’s life because it can lower self-esteem, isolate people from real relationships, and cause privacy concerns as marketers, employers, and school officials can view information posted online.
Even though people have different opinions on whether social media has a positive or negative impact on society, it can be said that social media has a positive effect on society as a whole because it lets people communicate with each other easily, it has been said to improve education among children, and has helped improve the economy in the world. One of the main reasons why social media has positively affected our society is because of how it has made communicating with people much easier. “Today, four out of five active internet users maintain at least one social media profile” (Moe, 3). Using these websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and etc., people talk about everything with anyone from what they are planning to do, to what they are eating and much more (Moe, 24). We can also send private messages to other users of these websites about personal matters that you just want to discuss with them.
“In order to maintain a positive on-going relationship in any difficult face-to-face circumstance, an individual must learn the appropriate socialization rituals. Knowing these rituals and being able to play a proper front stage role is crucial in order for an individual to get along with others (Brignall and Valey, 2005).” With the relatively recent rise of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, the means for maintaining relationships through these platforms rather than speech communication and face-to-face communication are becoming much more apparent and widespread throughout society. However, it is difficult to maintain these relationships without knowing proper social skills especially if these skills are not practiced or introduced to an individual. Although, “Communication frequency and self-disclosure play a role in computer-mediated communication and the formation of online friendships just as they do in face-to-face interactions and offline friendships (Subrahmanyam and Greenfield, 2008).” Yet, in our vast digital world that we reside in today, the ways in which we choose to communicate are becoming hindered by our participation in online communication. “We must have a philosophical understanding of the purpose and importance of communication to individuals and based upon this understanding, shape our attitude and value toward the communication process (McFarlane, 2010).” It is extremely crucial to understand communication’s importance and to not tuck the original beliefs and values regarding the tool underneath the rug, resorting and succumbing to communicating poorly in a fashion that mimics what we have now experienced via our devices. “As with any social change, we also believe there is a need to study and understand the impacts that change might have, regardless of whether such changes are viewed as positive or