Negative Effects of Technology

Negative Effects of Technology

Technology has many different effects on our everyday life. The effects of technology are often negative for many people. For example, television, computers, and cell phones are lifelines of technological advances of everyday life for many people. First, television has taken away time from our families, friends, and the social interaction with the real world. Second, computers have also taken away from social interaction and are misrepresentative of the real world. Third, cell phones affect our ability to communicate effectively and texting hurts our grammar skills that we have learned all our lives. Even though technology advances today's society it often teaches us the wrong perception of reality.

Television has taken away from the quality of life. There is often no quality together time with our families. It takes away from family mealtime, playtime, and socialization altogether. First, there is often no family that sits down to have a meal together anymore. Television often is used to replace the ordinary daily life communication of a family by taking away the

...hours of sitting around the dinner table, the spontaneous taking up of an activity, the little games invented by children on the spur of the moment when there is nothing else to do, the scribbling, the chatting, and even the quarreling, all the things that form the fabric of a family, that define a childhood. (Winn 438)

Everyone is often too busy or doing their own thing. Second, there is no family discussion or interaction with each other because the television is seen as the peacemaker of the family. It keeps the peace and everyone preoccupied by taking the place of discussion and avoiding the real life at hand. Television has become such an influence in life that for many it is a ritual. Families no longer spend time together as a whole watching television. Television is watched in different rooms, by different parts of the family, at different times. Television is a misrepresentative of reality and real people by no interaction or communication with nothing other than a screen.

Computers are also misrepresentative of the real world and real people because you have no interaction or communication with one on one contact. The only communication is through a screen. Computers are the wrong communication method that we learn in today's society because they teach us that you do not have to have the physical contact with a real person.

This computer screen can be a way to hide the real person anyone is. There is no physical contact, emotion, or tone from a computer. Daum states "the outside world--the place where I walk around avoiding people I didn't want to deal with, peppering my casual conversations with half-truths, and applying my motto "Let the machine take it" to almost any scenario--was sliding into the periphery of my mind."