How Does Technology Negatively Affect Brain Development?

The history of technology has evolved so radically over the past decades that our culture has also changed dramatically and become a representation of our identity. Evidently, tools such as cell phones, laptops, iPads, and other mobile devices have effectively integrated itself into our lives and defined us as a civilization with modern technologies. Although the impact of technology have changed our working system and increased our productivity, we become ignorant of how harmful it can also do to our mind and society. Our ability to think critically, analyze, and problem solving has become greatly obstructed as technologies do the work for us. We are unaware that there are more negative consequences from technologies that can harm our health,
Technology negatively affects brain development more so than improving it. Our level of competency and creativity decreases as we become more dependent on modern tools such as calculators for simple math calculations, albeit we may need it when calculating intricate mathematical problems such as calculus. With Wikipedia and Google, students are able to access virtually any information available; however, not much of the information posted on the Internet are accurate and does not encourage critical thinking when writing a paper (such as I am doing now). Technologies are a source of distraction and is a big concern when students are not learning the social skills needed to function in the real word; they rely too heavily on social media and performs poorly at social events or job interviews as a result. It is popular in colleges and universities for students to be using their laptops in classrooms for note taking. However, it is evident that our attention span does not last for 10 minutes until he/she ever so slyly hovers the mouse over Google and begins reading Twitter messages for non-educational purposes, which may disrupt learning ability and focus on classroom content. Technology is also detrimental to one’s health if we do not give ourselves
Our social skills decrease as we slowly avoid face-to-face confrontations, and we begin to lose the ability to read body languages and social cues. It becomes increasingly difficult to express oneself or interpret expressions when we are accustomed to reading text messages without relating to the actual feelings of the person who sent that message. A lack in face-to-face meetings also create a lack in social bonds as we are not making that social connection. With that said, we also do not know our social boundaries when multiple people are sharing the same social media sites (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram). Technologies can be powerful and are often abused; cyber bullying and cyber stalking becomes an ethical issue that teenagers are facing these days, sometimes due to parental negligence in watching what their children are doing, but also sometimes we are ignorant of what constitutes as crossing the line. This social media exploitation can be damaging and harmful to a person’s privacy, and can escalate to a severe degree which results in many teenage