Last updated on August 19, 2020
There is technology everywhere in the world that we live in today. Everywhere you turn and go, people are using cell phones, computers, and televisions. At schools, projectors are used and integrated into students’ daily lives.
Chromebooks and iPads are being bought and sometimes even required at richer schools. With all this technology at people’s disposal, there are benefits and disadvantages that come with the responsibility that humans have acquired through technology.
At the push of a button, humans can get in touch with friends and talk to the people we know. Someone in the United States can talk to someone in China without moving from their seat. At the same time, studies have shown that people are feeling as lonely as ever because of the technology we use and this ease at which we can talk to each other.
People are not going out of their homes and watching movies with their friends or going to the mall to shop and socialize. Instead, America’s younger generation has used the technology that they have at their fingertips to continuously talk to their friends. This lack of face to face interaction with other people is what drives humans to feel like we are out of touch from society.
This sense of being an outcast from society can also stem from social media outlets such as Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook. This phenomenon has become popular within the past decade and has been growing with advancements in the tech industry.
However, social media has been the driving force in loneliness and clinical depression. People from all over the world usually post the positive parts of their lives on these social media outlets.
When people see these overly positive depictions, they usually compare these posts with their lives resulting in them feeling inferior. This feeling of dread and insecurity further fuels the loneliness caused by technology. This is the one major disadvantage of the growing use of technology in our world today.
The rise of the smart home accurately displays the benefits and the disadvantages of technology in this modern era. With rising technologies such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa, people can turn on their lights or televisions just by voice command. This can lead to a lazy, technology-dependent lifestyle.
While laziness is undesirable, greedy tech companies design their products to make owning their devices more appealing. To add insult to injury, terrorists and criminals have also been able to hack into smart homes and listen to people’s conversations.
The smart home, therefore, can pose a threat to privacy. Although there are measures being implemented by big tech companies to stop this from happening, cybersecurity is a relatively new study making it harder to make a rational countermeasure.
This is the horrible side of the technology industry, but this “bad side” can apply to any other industry. The good side to the smart home is the ease at which the elderly can control their homes, and limit the injuries that they can get from falling or tripping over objects.
In fact, this is one of the reasons why families should invest in technology. It will help make the older generation’s lives easier. It will ensure that we will have a continuous connection with the older and younger American people. Again, this can be applied to all technologies.
As Albert Einstein once said:
“Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal”
Meaning that we should use technology responsibly, and not let it control and take over our everyday lives.
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