An Ugly Toll Of Technology Analysis

Twice as many children have cell phones now than they did in 2004. In a similar way, technology has managed to wiggle itself into every part of our daily lives. Whether it’s using Siri on an iPhone or getting an X-ray, technological advancements has changed the way people function, especially adolescents. Technology has hindered the development of children in subtle ways but is proving to have immense impacts on youth.
In many ways, technology has changed the way children’s minds function. Technology’s impact on children has led society to deem it an obsession. A New York Times article entitled “An Ugly Toll of Technology” by Tara Parker-Pope, explains, “We do spend a lot of time with our devices, and some studies have suggested that excessive
Children these days are having technology create their childhood and imagination for them. Esther Dyson writes in her article, from the book, “What We Believe But We Cannot Prove: Today’s Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty,” “But today’s children are living in an information-rich, time-compressed environment that often seems to stifle a child’s imagination rather than stimulate it.” While parents are meant to believe that they are doing the best for their child by providing complex technology, this quote shows that allowing their kids to have access to devices is not allowing theme to advance their thinking and is slowly deteriorating their quality of imagination. A simple example of this is the toys that have speech and action programmed into them. These toys are controlling the creativity of the children playing with them because they already have a preset scenario the children are supposed to work with instead of having the child create a situation for themselves. Society also relies on technology to help build relationships in life because the “...immediacy of the Internet, the efficiency of the iPhone and the anonymity of the chat room change the core of who we are…” (Parker-Pope). In a similar way, the fact that we can hide behind cracked phone screens and edited pictures, changes our moral values and disables our conscious from functioning in a healthy way. This change has challenged children's abilities to make their own, honest relationships with people in their lives. If children continue on this path, their social skills will be left permanently