friend or foe

Antoinette Ransom
English 1
MWF 9-9:50
Friend or Foe?
Technology is advancing at a faster pace than ever before in history. People are continually discovering more ways to do things faster and easier, and to make their lives simpler. It has taken many great minds to reach the point that at in our technological advances and our society. The knowledge to make those advances did not just appear overnight, they had to work at it. This advancement has really taken a toll on society and its brains. As technology has advanced so has the person’s total dependency on it to run lives and minds, which in the end will not turn out well. The average American uses seven hours of technology each day. Meaning they waste more than a quarter of the day using various technical items. Technology is not the people’s friend and it is disabling independent people. People are lazier, they no longer rely on other resources, and it promotes cheating.
One technological advance that has increased laziness in humans is the television. With the introduction of the television, humans found a way to not only satisfy their entertainment needs in the comfort of their own homes, but with this invention they have also been able to discover a new way to become simply, lazy. In fact, television watching time over the years has lead to increased obesity in many children in our country. When the television remote was introduced, although it kept people on couches for extended periods of time, it became a fundamental change in the way that people engaged with the television experience. However, this technological advance ultimately has lead to our current “couch potato” society, which is a classic example of technology making us lazy. Technology has allowed people to grow and expand as humans. People have become more advanced in technology, we have been able to create many things essential to the survival of our species, as well as make life, well, more enjoyable. However, these same advancements in technology have made lazier Americans due to the fact that technology can accomplish a lot of tasks that humans had to do manually in the past.
With all of this new development in computers and technology, we as a culture lost sight of the real world. Today, if all the generators and computers shut down or were off limits, Americans would not be able to survive. Many years ago people got along without all these gadgets just fine. They survived with Facebook or Twitter. People thought of themselves instead of googling their every need or question, or problem. Dependency on their computers has become too vulnerable.
As technology advances the biggest temptation is to just rely completely and entirely on it to run lives. Americans need to resist that temptation and go out into the world and learn some things for themselves. There are some things that people just cannot learn from Google. It is okay to use the technology that has been created, but do not allow to become totally dependent on it. Dare to become one of the great minds of the world, resist lazy urges and learn something new. Nowadays people can do anything and everything online, on phones, on computers or any other device. There is now no need to learn to write cursive, or write anything at all, there are computers for that. Also there’s no need to have anything more than a basic knowledge of math, if even that. That’s what calculators are for. If someone needed to know some fact or have a question answered, Google is always there. Even as this paper is being written there is hardly a need to know how to spell anything more than basic words. People do not have to leave their house for anything at all. Anything needed can be delivered right to someone’s doorstep. Forget passing handwritten notes underneath desks or inking a person’s arm with essential math formulas before a killer test. If students today want to cheat, they have a more insidious tool at their disposal: cell phones. More than one third of teens with cell phones admit to having stored information on them to look at during a test or texting friends about answers.
Studies of student behavior and attitudes show that a majority of students violate standards of academic integrity to some degree, and that high achievers are just as likely to do it as others. Moreover, there is evidence that the problem has worsened over the last few decades. Experts say the reasons are relatively simple: Cheating has become easier and more widely tolerated, and both schools and parents have failed to give students strong, repetitive messages about what is allowed and what is prohibited. Internet access has made cheating easier, enabling students to connect instantly with answers, friends to consult and works to plagiarize. Generations of research has shown that a major factor in unethical behavior is simply how easy or hard it is. The Internet has changed attitudes, as a world of instant downloading, searching, cutting and pasting has loosened some ideas of ownership and authorship. An increased emphasis on having students work in teams may also have played a role.
There are several downsides of technology. When a person has a computer of any kinds whether it’s a cell phone or laptop, they constantly have to get upgraded. Often times upgrading can become time consuming and costly. Not to mention, technology completely invades privacy. Overall, technology become a foe instead a friend that society portrays it to be. It has disabled Americans. People no longer rely on resources, promotes laziness, and cheating. A friend would not cause such a negative influence. Instead technology should lift us as people. Help us work to become stronger and more independent .