Technology Overload

Zacharias Morton
Emma Liddle
Composition 101: Essay 1
2/21/2012
TECHNOLOGY OVERLOAD
In today's culture, there is no escape from technology. We are completely engulfed in our cell phones, I phones, computers, and gaming systems. These devices give us the opportunity to be connected to each other and the rest of the world at all times. But, this is a good and bad step in history. Technology blinds us from the real world, and makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except technology. This is the world we live in, people are so addicted to technological devices they have forgotten what it is to be social. Social by definition is to live in companionship with others or in a community, rather than in isolation (Dictionary.com). The arrival of social networking is ironically the beginning of our social downfall. When do you pull the plug and realize that too much of anything, no matter how good it is, is a bad thing. We may run our lives with the help of our Blackberry phones and Apple computers, but do these forms of technology in turn control us? At first glance these new advances are greater steps to making our lives easier. But when examined closely, a large part of technology is the cause of many problems in our society. Years ago, simple toys filled the shelves in department stores. Things like Tonka Trucks, dress-up dolls, and bicycles were the hot items flying off the shelves. Now, kids are begging for new games for their PlayStations and Wii systems. Video games take on a lot of heat because of they’re negative side effects they have among children for example making kids lazy, obese, and withdrawn from other social ills. According to Palo Alto Medical foundation “numerous studies show that video games, especially ones with violent content, make teens more aggressive”. The authors also stated that teens who play violent video games for extended periods of time tend to be more aggressive, are prone for confrontation with their teachers, engage in fights with their peers, and see a decline in school achievements. (Gentile et al, 2004). The aggression problems come from the video games because parents do not impose a time frame on the number of hours children spend playing and are unaware of the content software rating. Parents are oblivious to the fact that these are problems children have when it comes to technology, it becomes a drug and controls the child instead of them controlling it.
Society as a whole respects and admires technology because it is there to benefit them. Without the technological advances we have had over the years, the world would not be what it is today. What people don’t understand is that technology can actually be a bad thing. Our downfall is always looking for more and more ways to be entertained, and all it is doing is causing problems. People are doing less and less thinking and more and more watching, listening, and playing, all because of technology. Which is turning into a huge problem because we actually depend more on capital goods, than relying on our human resources. The problem being is we rely so much on technology to do things like surgeries, car assembly, and many other forms of production that one day it can glitch and we will forget how to go back to the basics being hands on. People make technological devices so important such as your cellphones and Apple Products that they actually control you because you depend on them to function daily.
Forms of entertainment like the Internet, television, Social Networking and even video games seem harmless to people, but they are really not. When the Internet was first introduced, people never thought it would be as big as it is today. The Internet is an easy to use technology that can do just about anything. But what people do not understand is that the Internet is not always a good thing, it also has downfalls. For example instead of communicating with one another in person we rather jump on line and face time or instant message on a Social Network such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Etc.… It takes away from our everyday life becoming a opportunity cost to the other physical interactive things we enjoy to do like sports, hanging out with friends, and other human interactions. In “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism”, Rosen argues that the generation of social networks like MySpace and Facebook implies a new economy of human interaction lacking the substance of “real” relationships. She interprets the growth of social networks in light of the fact that “For centuries, the rich and the powerful documented their existence and their status through painted portraits. A marker of wealth and a bid for immortality, portraits offer intriguing hints about the daily life of their subjects—professions, ambitions, attitudes, and, most importantly, social standing” (Rosen 404).
In recent years a phenomena called social networking has taken off. While there are numerous social networking sites, Facebook is by far the largest and most popular. Facebook has more than 500 million active users, people spend over 700 billion minutes per month on it, and the average user has 130 friends. Facebook and other social networking sites gotten out of hand because the designer have programmed them so people check them regularly. While some people may believe social networking has positive effects on humans, it in fact has negatively altered the way we communicate, our identities, and even our health. People change their identities everyday online to become something their not. In “What Adolescent Miss When We Let Them Grow Up in Cyberspace” illustrated the point with “Marcus Arnold, who, as a 15-year old, adopted a pseudonym a few years ago and posed as a 25-year old legal expert for a Internet information service”(Michal Lewis 404). Marcus didn’t fell guilty when real world layers of being a fraud exposed him. He is just one of many kids that pose as something cooler, older, and more socially powerful than themselves to fill a void for something their missing. If kids were more social they wouldn’t have spend most of their time on computers, it can actually spent being a kid instead of growing into adulthood so rapidly without maturing.
The Internet, television and social networks are probably the three biggest distractions we face in society today. Whether it is either of the three, technological advancements have their advantages and disadvantages. People never think that something that is said to be so good can actually have a bad side to it. People get too caught up in things sometimes that they forget what it is there for. What society has to learn is use technology the right way so we can get the best out of it without overusing it.