Whom or what would people considered the most terrifying thing known to mankind to exist or to have existed on this planet? Something that would inject fear into your veins, send shivers down your spine. Some would argue sadistic serial killers like Jeffery Dahmer and Ted Bundy, others would claim a 30-foot tall meat eating dinosaur. What if all these examples pale in comparison to the greatest monstrosity of them all: Technology. Technology has seeped into every facet of our lives, its slowly contorting and manipulating society for the worse.
Much like the story of Victor Frankenstein who created life, so have we in technology and just like him, we have failed to look after it. Inventors and scientists have become so heavily invested in advancing technology, that given in a certain time span, society could fall subordinate to technology as it starting to have ingrained itself and handicapping society to become dependent of it. Technology ironically enough, for its vast troves of information that are a click away, is actually hindering and affecting our intelligence as a society. “We are losing the power to concentrate.
If we are not drowned by email, by text messages, or tweets telling us to look at some site or YouTube clip, or browsing our friends’ updates on a social network, listening to mp3 music, zapping through 100 TV shows, answering the phone, or calling someone” (Maurer 49). Technology is affecting our cognitive abilities, shifting our attention spans and making it harder to concentrate. With this problem of constantly switching over to the next thing that grabs our attention, we no longer really grasp what we read, we mostly just skim through the text.
Consequently, people will become less intelligence due to our dependence of technology to do everything for them. One thing that is affecting our cognitive abilities is the ability to spell and write correctly, with spell check on browsers and our keyboards for smartphones, making us more dependent of technology to think for us. While we think that we are intelligent because we have all this information on the internet, in reality, as a society, we are becoming less intelligent due to the fact that we don’t use our brains like we have before we had technology, it enabling us to allow it to do all the thinking for us.
With newer inventions and as technological advancements come forth every day, our privacy has shrunken. Due to technology, our planet has become smaller by the day, soon enough there won’t be any places to hide from watchful eyes. Whether it be a cell phone, laptop webcam, game console system or surveillance cameras at businesses, society is under 24/7 surveillance due to these devices. With advancements in technology, what used to bulky items, can now be something that can fit inside of your palm and with that goes our perceived thought of privacy. It’s too readily easy for anyone to record or view another person without their consent.
A webcam can be hacked and a person can be spied on without even known. A peeping tom can discreetly pull out their phone to record an unsuspecting individual. Security cameras posted in and outside of every business ensure that most of society is being recorded at some point. Another harm created by technology is what it is doing to us on a personal level. Texting, Snap chatting, face timing someone, posting on someone’s Facebook page, are all contributing in a detrimental way to society becoming less personal and has a great impact on how people interact with each in the real world.
Walk into a restaurant or go family gathering and see how many faces are glued to some type of electronic. Many people immerse themselves with their technologies that they lose a lot of social skills that way, they secluded themselves with their laptops or smartphones and it hinders their abilities to interact normally with other people. Also, another negative to this would be how malicious people can be on the internet. Something about being behind a keyboard and being able to remain anonymous gives a lot of people this courage to go on there and say whatever they like despite if it is hateful or rude.
Bullying people from behind a keyboard is all too common these days. Technology keeps facilitating these detrimental behaviors making society worse. How simple and easy has it become for someone to call a person names or belittle them knowing they are not going to be able to really do anything about it, you can’t currently punch someone through their computer screen for this, well at least not yet. In addition to things that are making society less personal, is this attempt to share a lot of our experiences online with people that we often forget to enjoy the experiences themselves.
For example, for anyone who has gone to a concert recently, everyone spends the whole time trying to record the show on their phones and cameras, that they can’t sit back and enjoy the concert like they had originally planned too because they were so caught up trying to record it and share it through social media. Furthermore, staying on the topic of social media, enabled through technology, could even be viewed as this cult. It’s borderline brainwashing, religious in nature. How often does a person go on their phone and check for updates?
For most it would here and there, “Average usage time in North America is 5. 2 hours a month” (comScore 2015). That’s looking at the low end of the spectrum but for a lot of people in today’s society there is the urge to grab their phones to go on social media any chance they get. A lot of people when they wake up in the morning, the first thing they do is check their social media sites for updates. Technology has contributed to this by making so it easy and accessible to have it in the palm of hands.
Social media sites and apps can be very time-consuming and distracting. Consider social media sites the drug and technology, the drug dealer. Let’s move onto the physical effects that technology has on us. With the progression and advancements in technology, it facilities life for those who would need it, in regards to people who have lost limbs and due to medical conditions, have a really difficult time getting around. In an ideal world, only the truly handicapped individuals would utilize these types of technology, which is not the case.
Much like the scene from Andrew Stanton’s Wall-E, where it shows every human being riding in a hovering chair to every location, while being obese with a TV screen in front of them. This prediction of what humanity would be like isn’t as farfetched as it seems. Go to any local supermarket, a casino or theme park and the number of overweight people riding around in electric wheelchairs is staggering. Not going to argue who legitimately needs one and who is being lazy, but the proof is there, more people are taking advantage of technology like electric wheelchairs and scooters to get around.
Technology is contributing to society’s poor health standards. As technology gets more incorporated in our work settings, more people will suffer from the bad posture as they will be hunched over all day in front of computer screen for 8 hours. Bad posture will affect our bodies and bones structures that will lead to other problems as we age. Also just by spending time on our smartphones will lead to bad posture as well, consistently looking down at our phones and for long periods of time, will contribute to bad posture. Technology is enabling us to live sedentary lifestyles.
Long gone are the days of kids spending most of their days playing outside, in playgrounds or exploring nature. Much of the youth today spends most of their time in front a TV or video game console often forgoing physical exercises which heavily contributes to diabetes and other health risks. A lot of parents when seeking to calm down an upset kid or keep them entertained will just throw them in front of TV or an electric device, and leave them be. “The average time spent weekly on some type of digital format is 35 hours a week for most young people” (Experian; MarketingCharts 2013).
This creates a vicious cycle of making kids dependent of technology for entertainment which contributes to an unhealthy sedentary lifestyle. Technology will do to society what the big banks did to the US economy back in 2008, cost a lot of people their jobs. With continued advancements of technology in factories and businesses, with the push to optimize output while lowering costs, many jobs will be lost largely due to new technology. Many factories are switching over to automated production lines and replacing human bodies with robots. As more people are put out of work, it will widen the gap between the rich and the poor.