Technology pervades our everyday lives. From work to school to downtime, we use technology everywhere. Technology allows us to access the entire database of human knowledge in seconds, and has given the gift of knowledge to more people than ever before in human history. But modern technology is feared by some for the addiction and isolation they bring. For those who have experienced these effects or heard of them, technology would undermine everything we are as humans. However, the truth is that modern technology is the public’s convenient scapegoat that is often blamed for society’s faults. While many concerns have grounding in reality, many others are tied to societal or long standing problems that are only loosely connected.
One of the greatest concerns people have with technology is how social media is making us less social and stop interacting with the people around us. While it is true that people today are preferring communication with total strangers online, it can also allow us to better communicate with people we are familiar with in real life. Social media’s main weakness is in the human element it lacks. While you can hold conversations, your brain rarely ever feels like it’s actually face to face with a human. In recent years however, with the introduction of virtual reality, socialization regains a human aspect. Social media has connected the world in ways that we never could have imagined two decades ago. Any person with a connection can hop on the internet and be communicating with a person on the other side of the world in seconds.
Research has proven that smartphone usage has an effect on the development of children’s brains, and that smartphones are the leading cause of distracted driving. The first problem has a simple solution: by limiting children’s exposure to devices so that they can develop normally and use more technology when their brains have matured, while the second problem is only due to a lack of common sense in today’s people. The only true weakness in technology is the flesh that must wield it. Unlike machines, humans are susceptible to temptation, addiction, and petty anger. We as humans must temper ourselves to control the ways we use technology and not allow it to be used to control us. By educating future generations in the safe usage of technology we ensure that by the time they reach adolescence they are mature enough to demonstrate restraint.
If we learn to use our technology in a way that doesn’t make us solely reliant on it, and learn to exercise restraint from always using it. Technology is humanity’s greatest tool and has proven that it can and will be used to better our society as long as we can control our usage of it.