Essay #4

Caitlin O’Connor

10/30/19

Engl 101-133

Essay 4 cause and effect

Has technology made us less social?

I believe that technology today has made everyone antisocial. Everywhere you go you’ll see that everyone is face down in their phone walking on sidewalks, sitting with a group of friends at a cafe, or even driving on the road. We are so glued to this new technology today we that we missed big moments or even we forget our friends. Nowadays we would rather sit at home and binge watch Netflix rather than go out with friends and make memories and appreciate the moments with friends and family. I’ll be talking about the effects technology has on us today.

Today’s technology has complete control over us, We may not know it but it does. Everywhere we go we can’t be without our phones. We can’t miss a single notification we get from every app no matter what, we would rather read an article from facebook, or make a match on tinder, or even message someone else rather talk to the person in front of us at breakfast, lunch, or dinner. From an article (Addicted to phones? by April Frawley Birdwell) states that studies have shown children with cell phones don’t make as many friends as their less tech-savvy peers. Another study has shown that three- fourths of children have mobile phones. This may be a sign that children view phones as a necessity like a car.

Is today’s internet making us smarter or dumber, a quote from a roman philosopher seneca have said it best 2,000 years ago: “to be everywhere is to be nowhere” even though today’s internet grants us easy access to all the information in the world. But scientific evidence suggests that the Net, with its distractions and interruptions, is also turning billions of people into scattered superficial thinkers. Once an experiment was held at Cornell University, half a class of students was allowed to use internet computers during a lecture while the other half could not use the computers, the half with the computers did worse on a subsequent test of how well they retained the lecture’s content. The reason why was that most of the students were distracted by web surfing during the lecture.

With today's internet parents have to worry about what their kids are watching on TV, or looking up on the web, or even what video games they are playing. But the one thing parents should really worry about is what today’s technology is doing to their kids' health. Studies have shown that on days at-risk adolescents use technology more, they experience more conduct problems and higher ADHD symptoms compared to days they use technology less,” said Madeleine J. George, a Duke Ph.D. candidate and the lead author of the study. Also if kids are spending too much time on TV, phones, or video games, they’re at risk of losing sleep at night which could lead to depression and anxiety.

In conclusion technology today has made us less social in today’s society. We are addicted to our phones everywhere we go which could lead to be less talkative when we are hanging out with friends. Even with the access of all the information in the world we are not proving to be getting smarter with all the distractions on the web. The technology today is also affecting our youths health when they are spending too much time on video games, phones, TV, or computers they lose sleep and can cause ADHD.   

Work cited

Birdwell, April. “Addicted to Phones?” University of Florida News: Health, Research, Technology, 18 January 2007, https://news.ufl.edu/2007/01/18/cell-addiction/