Monday, 6 January 2014
Technology makes us LAZY
After discussing the article by Jarrid Wilson, "Why I'm Getting a Divorce in 2014," a situation that I endured this summer came across my mind. I spent a lot of time with a friend of mine who just recently received an iphone as a gift. This article talks about learning to balance the amount of time you spend on your phone and giving yourself limitations with the usage of your phone. Wilson says that you should not let your phone control you and I think this is excellent advice. The friend of mine who I spent a lot of time with over the past 3 weeks became a victim of the power her iphone had over her. At any given time, she was glued to her phone; she was always scrolling and refreshing her social media and looking at photos on the Instagram app. Need I say, she was taking endless photos of everything that we would do, editing the photos and posting them online and waiting for people to "like" these photos. Her phone consumed her and she did not even realize. I think that nowadays, we are too often on our technology devices and it makes us antisocial and quite frankly, dumb. We are dependent on calculators for simple math and dependent on our phones to tell the time. Though I was in this girl's presence, she would find it appropriate to stare at her phone's screen and completely ignore my existence. That is, until I would make a comment about how boring she was acting. Then, she would become offended and claim that she was not obsessed with her phone and that she was "just checking it." I think it would be a great decision for someone to make their phone an accessory rather than a priority, which is what Wilson says in his article. We need to stop relying on our phones, get up off of our lazy backsides and divorce our phones. It's time that we start becoming more active again and have face-to-face conversations, if we even remember what those are.
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I completely agree with your point on using our phones and their apps as tools rather than letting it control us. Sometimes we forget that apps such as facebook and instagram are actually businesses. They are intelligently designed to make us constantly use them. We are addicted and not just “checking” them.
ReplyDeleteRecent studies have shown that sites such as facebook also have the extraordinary power of lowering self-esteem and feeding anxiety and insecurities (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Study-suggests-social-networking-websites-feed-anxiety-and-insecurity/articleshow/14782456.cms) I myself have felt the crushing sense of worthlessness when I post a picture on facebook, and then compare myself to another person who has a hundred more likes on their photo. It disgusts me that these media sites exploit our insecurities in order to make a profit.
Thank you for sharing this. I completely share both of your strong opinions! I don't like technology and especially social media like facebook. People say to me though, why don't you delete your facebook then? I must say, I did delete my facebook for 3 month last year. It is difficult though because I lost touch with a lot of friends that live in other countries than me. Now that I live in Canada I want to keep in tough with the people from back home and the only way I communicate with them is over facebook. I don't like this fact at all and I wish that this will change in the future.
ReplyDeleteWhat I think is very ironic is that facebook is called 'social media'. In what way does it make you social? It makes you indeed antisocial!! Teenagers these days feel more comfortable to ask out someone on a date over faebook than person. No one really communicates anymore and everything happens online. If there is one thing I would change in this world, it would be to bring back real communication. Communication that still has passion and feelings in it, and not just a simple smiley.
I agree, Lea. It is always a last resort for me to be on my cellular phone or computer. I love engaging in conversation - like our conversations! [: I don't think I could make connections with people over the internet, as I like to keep it personal and actively listen to people and providing constructive feedback and exchanging opinions.
DeleteI really like your argument in this post but also like Lea's point about how it can keep us in touch. It's like my mother says, "Everything in moderation" which I think definitely applies to this social media/ technology situation. I think that social media and technology can act as a good thing but too much can be dangerous. I am not really avid user of social media, mainly because of the fact that I own an old blackberry that doesn't have a data plan, but I do however like to use Facebook for the groups i am apart of. Facebook can be a great organizational tool if trying to arrange an event. I can definitely relate to your situation with your friend that is addicted to their phone, seeing as how I have a few of them myself.
ReplyDeleteI love that quote, "everything in moderation." I completely agree. I also have an old blackberry and I refuse to convert to purchasing an iPhone. My point is that all of the simple things we do, like check our phones for the time or use them as calculators or check for messages, all add up and we don't realize it but it's consuming us. We are addicted to "just checking" our devices for new messages or new images on our Instagram homepages. I strongly believe that face-to-face conversation is much more effective and personal that speaking with someone via the internet. This used to be the norm but now, being able to verbally and physically communicate is considered a skill because it is so rare.
DeleteI live in this fear that in the future technology will become such a big part of life that people will lose the ability to communicate in person. Think, if we were to go back in time to less the fifty years ago and suggest that girls and boys were going to ask another on dates, break up with another, share intimate details about anthers life via social media no one would believed us; but now there is even online dating! A large number of people form relationships on the internet before even having a face to face conversation. Recently I watch this movie named "her". The movie is about a man who falls in love with a computer operating system that is designed to provide him with company. The system talks to him throughout the day, answer his questions, makes jokes with him. He know that this voice he is in love with does not have body or even a brain of it's own and none the less he still love it. What if relationship between computer operating systems is our future? I'm concerned that the human race has will become so anti social that they will avoid all human interaction.
ReplyDeleteTrue - if we had made these kind of predictions years ago, people would think we were crazy. Now, I am no longer surprised or dumbfounded by advances in technology and I don't think there is much that someone could tell me that I would not believe can happen in the future. That film seems really interesting; I just watched the preview for it online. I prefer human interaction than interaction via social media/texting because it much more personal and unfortunately, I predict that the future is going to be run by technology. I also think that the human race is going to be so consumed in technology and that personal human interaction will become something of the past. We are already so anti-social and it's only going to get worse.
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