Technology is frequently criticized for how closely tied it has become to our lives, but freshman staff writer Ashley Lawrence debates whether is it really as bad as it’s made out to be? Cartoon by Ashley Lawrence.
By ASHLEY LAWRENCE – Staff Writer
Freshman staff writer Ashley Lawrence explains the importance of social media and technology and the role it has had in her life.
Often the Internet is graced with editorial cartoons, depicting teenagers as drooling zombies, slumping over glowing screens; children sitting in their desks, confused as they search for the power button on a text book. Regardless of what’s drawn, they all mean the same thing– they all criticize how youth nowadays is enraptured with technology.
Yet, it’s very convenient to complain about such a thing. It’s very convenient to demonize social media in a tweet sent out to the Internet. It’s very convenient to hunch over a graphics tablet and scribble a drawing of adolescents being enslaved by smartphones and computers for an online article.
It’s incredibly convenient to gripe about teenagers with technology, while ignoring the benefits that technology has provided.
Search engines, for example, provide us with a plethora of relevant information to our access when we need them. According to an experiment in which a group of people were given a set of questions to answer, those who were allowed to use search engines to answer them completed the task within 10-15 minutes, as opposed to those who used offline resources.
Furthermore, technology has proven to be helpful in the classroom for its ability to immediately inform them of how they have done on an assignment and show how they have improved. It even allows for learning and doing work outside of the classroom, provided the student has access to the Internet at home.
Technology can also be beneficial through video games and can actually help those with ADHD, given it is a fully engaging medium that gives the player something to do with their hands at the same time.
Also, while it is perhaps one of the most complained about aspects of technology, social media and instant messaging applications are also beneficial. It provides the ability to talk to someone even if it is impossible to speak to them directly.
Some of my closest friends and family live in other states or in foreign countries. I can’t talk to them face-to-face, but platforms like Twitter and Skype allow me to keep in touch with them despite the distance.
Technology may not be perfect, but it’s certainly not the plague it’s made out to be. It has allowed us to develop further as people and live comfortably. Technology will only continue to develop into ways we’ve never imagined it would before, and therefore complaining about the little things is useless.
