The Effects
of Technology Addiction
By
Pierre Jobel Nursewan (16714036)
It is very common these days to see people getting too
focused on their gadgets. This trend, called technology addict by some people,
seems to hit everyone from teenagers, businessmen, and even toddlers. Many
people criticize and even despise this kind of behavior, and for good reasons.
While such condition is not new in the history of human behavior, it seems that
current ones are more worrisome than those of old times. There are four main
reasons why technology addiction is a problem and should not be taken lightly.
One of the main effect is that distracts us from social
interactions. While one of the most addicting technology out there is social
media, ironically, it makes us not want to socialize with other people because
now we can choose with whom we want to socialize with. Focusing on our
smartphone, laptops, or gaming consoles takes too much of our concentration
that we cannot communicate with other people. And sometimes, people lose the
ability to communicate properly with other people when they spend too much time
reading or browsing the Internet.
Another effect of technology addiction is, as the name
induces, addiction. For some people, technology is so important to their life
to the point they don’t want to leave technology at all cost. Studies shows
that people that have Internet addiction shows the same symptoms as those of
drug addict; for example, they feel the need to use internet regularly, and
when these Internet addict were taken apart from Internet for a reasonable
amount time, they, being addict, they feel unease and cannot focus on their
task given to them. Also, their time spent on the Internet is increasing
overtime, consuming their productive time.
Time consummation is also a major problem. Kids that show
signs of Internet or video game addiction have their grade drops drastically.
Offices and workplaces also have their Internet connection secured, limiting
access to video sharing, social media websites, and other counter-productive
websites.
Beside from psychological effect mentioned above, it is
widely known that spending too much time on the computer, TV, or sometimes
books, causes some health problem. Obesity and stroke are mainly caused by the
lack of activity and too much energy intake; those are the things technology
addicts are. They spend too much time sitting and idling, because they need to
focus on their TV or computer. This also brings diseases that arise because of
lack of hygiene like food poisoning, various skin infections, and hepatitis A.
Television, cellular phones, and computers also generate electromagnetic wave
that is very dangerous under excessive use.
The four reasons previously described are why we should
wisely control our use of technology. While technology is very useful in our
everyday life, it can be very dangerous when the use is no longer controllable.
Technology gives us more access to knowledge and information, that we rely on
it too heavily and forget the dark side of it. Users must be wise to realize if
their use of technology is excessive or not, and that’s the difficult part of
fighting technology addict. We can easily see, understand, and even criticize
technology addiction while we can’t even leave home without our cellphone. We
must learn to control our technology addiction, so that our cellphone may not
become our “user”.
