Chelsea White
Why Technology is Killing Mankind
Over the decades, technological advancements have made a huge impact on how the world thinks, functions, and prospers. With these advancements, our world has been able to make everyday life a little easier, expand the educational development of students, and even cure fatal illnesses. However, there is an underlying evil that is slowly deciding our fate the more we advance technologically. The world is being stripped of what humans need the most: face-to-face communication. This not only affects us socially, but it indeed is affecting us economically and culturally. So the real question is, how much longer will the world stand as a whole?
One of the greatest aspects of technology is that it allows us to connect and reconnect with our family, friends, or strangers. As far as communicating goes, we are able to share and swap information with our peers with just the click of the button. Yet, most of the world is lacking the basic channel of actually communicating face-to-face. Without this face-to-face interaction, we are limiting the connection between the sender and receiver, as well as increasing the probability of misinterpretations and misunderstandings to occur. Even with video conversations like FaceTime or Skype, we are missing out on the natural communication that allows humans to truly link and understand each other. Socially, this is a slow suicide. Not only are we settling for mediocre conversing, but we are losing out on real life opportunities. A while back I viewed an anonymous video that explained how detrimental cell phones are. The majority of people walking down the street were glued to their phones, heads down, and their minds completely consumed with their apps on their phone. The point of the video was that because of the over utilization of cellular devices, we are missing out on the thing that matters most: human interaction. Humans absolutely need face-to-face communication in order to prosper in life and with each other.
Growing up, I have always been very lucky to have parents to guide me in the right direction, an older to sibling to “show me the ropes” to life, and a family friend who would support me unconditionally when my mother was sick. I remember Mom would spend hours signing me up for different sport camps and numerous ranch camps. When I wasn’t completely booked with pricey retreats, I would spend most of my summer days and weekends at my family friend’s house where we would engage in multiple outdoor activities. Very seldom would my friend, Courtney, and I sit inside and watch TV or stream games from our iPads. I grew up with a very strong sense of self and developed an exceptionally social personality which has helped me breeze by in life. However, I can’t say I have the same optimistic attitude for today’s youth prosperity. Children nowadays are put into their rooms, iPads in hand, expected to learn from their apps that their school recommended them to use. I will not argue, these apps and games have helped children develop intellectually and have improved the overall quality of teaching. Yet, these children are also missing out on the interaction and the creativity that goes with collaborating with their peers. This collaboration is what these kid need if we expect them to take care of our country when we become to old to do so.
To go hand and hand with children having access to better educational opportunities through their devices, the same children also have access to the rest of the internet. Although we like to think of the internet as a safe place for us to learn more, we don’t take into consideration the small barriers we set for children to break. I remember the first time I saw a pornographic image on the internet. I was about fourteen years old and someone had “hacked” my friend’s email. A message from her, also fourteen, popped into my inbox. I immediately opened it, thinking it was going to be another funny joke that I could put on my Myspace page. Long story short, I was scarred by the images I saw of a woman and a man. Even with the blockers my parents put on my internet use, I was still able to have access to something that I should have never seen. Unfortunately, I am not the only one with a story like this. A handful of my friends have also had experiences like this. Nowadays, with apps like Instagram and Twitter, our entire population is able to see anything and everything. Children, even of ten years if age, can view someone’s account and see what their role models are doing. Celebrities like Miley Cyrus are often seen posting images of smoking marijuana and partying in skimpy clothing while commenters all over the world are giving their feedback to each post by saying equally vulgar things. This is what kids have access to today. This is what kids are learning from.
It is amazing how much we have accomplished because of technology. Technology has provided us with the ability cure illnesses that may have been fatal before and is growing exponentially in terms of saving the lives of humans. It has in increased the speed of production with most corporations and given us a more reliable way to distribute goods without human error. Apart from these great attributions, I have personally noticed a huge decline in jobs nowadays. Although this can be blamed on complex and political reasons I will never understand about our economy, I believe that technology is slowly replacing the lives of humans. The movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, exemplifies my point exactly when Charlie’s father’s job of putting toothpaste caps on toothpaste is replaced by a drone of some sort. Despite this movie being fiction, this is a real-life occurrence that happens to many individuals all across the board. With this pattern of human substitution, many are left with no jobs while only a select few are left with jobs that are potentially very high paying. We can see the unequal distribution of finances that would cause harm to most of the world.
All in all, technology has been a beneficial aspect of the world’s maturation. It has enabled intellectual thinking and made sharing ideas much simpler. Nevertheless, there are always cons where their are pros. In this case, the cons are exceedingly higher and more frequent. Again, the real question is, how much longer will the world stand as a whole? That I cannot fathom into a set time, but I have a feeling it will be within a century. Regardless of the concerns, there is always a way to avoid this chaotic world that we are becoming, we just need to come together and support each other face-to-face, minus the bright screen between us.
