Technology in Modern Day Society
Technology has become a huge part in modern day society. We use it for communication, light, transportation, health, and so many jobs are also dependent on technology. It’s hard to imagine what life would be like without technology because for many people, this is their life.
At first technology was just used to satisfy our basic needs but everybody has wants. Then people started using technology as a form of entertainment. This is where websites and apps like youtube come into the picture. But that’s not the biggest problem. The biggest problem started after social media became popular.
How Much is Too Much
Many studies show that an average teenager spends around 9 hours on mixed media media every day! That’s more than one-third of our entire day. When you first hear nine hours that sounds unbelievable, but it’s actually a reasonable time due to how many gadgets children have daily access to.
Gadgets
There’s the TV, Laptop, Desktop, Phone, Tablet/IPad, Mp3 Player, any hand-held video gaming systems, and so much more. Most school allow students to use computers to do work and homework usually requires the use of a computer. That’s probably 3 hours right there. Social Media about 2 hours, watching TV another 2 hours, and that’s 7 hours right there. If you add in watching youtube, Netflix, texting your friends, and video games, it all adds up.
Children usually have school for 7 hours a day, and they sleep for 9 – 10 hours. That gives you 7 hours to spend time with your friends and family. But instead of going outside to play, or picking up a book, kids pick up the TV remote. As the statistics on technology use has gone off the charts, the stats for reading has gone down quite a bit.
Younger kids from the ages 2 – 5 should only be getting one hour of screen time every day. Most children from the ages 2 – 5 spend about 3.5 hours on electronics. Kids older than 6 should have screen-time limitations set by their parents. Although most parents do set these limitations for their kids a very small percentage of kids actually follow there rules. That definitely has to change.
Being Together Yet All Alone
Technology has only come this far to make our lives easier and to leave us with more family time on our hands. The exact opposite of that is taking place right now. A study done in 2010 states that two-thirds of families in America have their TV on during dinner time.
Dinner time is supposed to be that time of the day when you catch up with the people you love. That’s the time to talk with your family and get to know how their day went. It’s not the time to watch Spongebob. That might be a funny show to watch but family is real and keeping in check with reality is more important now than ever.
Technology is supposed to improve our lives, not take over our lives. Time is very precious and it shouldn’t be wasted on things you will forget about the next day like an instagram post. Family is supposed to be all about togetherness but now it’s like being together yet all alone.
