Alyssia Allen
Ms. Marsha Decker
English 1301
23 September 2015
Faster Reflexes and More Vacuous Our nation changes and improves every year, and one of the many improvements that continues to evolve is computer technology. It becomes more prominent and is changing the generations of teenagers and adults as it continues to become more popular. Many can argue that computer technology is good or bad for our minds. Nicholas Carr has shared his view that technology is making our minds vapid. He states at the end of his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence” (345). However along with all the advancements that can help our nation there are also a few technologies such as social media and gaming that does not exactly help improve our generation. Technology may be improving to be fulfilling the wants of people, however our nation needs a generation that does not spend their entire life on the internet. Therefore, social media or gaming is a drawback to computer technology because it begins to prevent people from using their full ability of brain power which will soon prevent from furthering technology in our world to better the nation. The internet and social media have benefited people by improving the knowledge that people have. Many great advances can come out of technology, because just thirty years ago our nation did not even know about the internet. However nowadays, it is used on a daily basis to help feed our knowledge by informing on national events or just simple topics such as what mla format is. The internet has become a daily reference we turn to now for information rather than books. It has become a broader book then ever imagined. Social media is a way that a lot of people use to keep in touch with others that they were not ever really close to but consider an acquaintance. However, not only does this encourage others to spend an abundance amount of time on social media, but it makes them distance themselves more from friends and family. In “Meet Your IBrain” by Small and Vorgan, it is stated that we lose our sense of reality with an artificial sense of intimacy instead compared to when we devote attention to one individual (351). The computer was the first connection that the nation had to use social media, but now days social media can also be used on cell phones or iPads. In an investigation of technology, it was shown by Small and Vorgan that people spend about an hour on the computer a day (349), but with cell phones always being on our hips minute by minute, that greatly increases the amount of time that a person spends on the internet or social media. A freshman student from Tarleton State University stated that she gets on her social media every five minutes just to check and see the updates people would post. She claimed that once she unlocked her phone the first thing she would do is get on Twitter, a social media, and just scroll through the “tweets” because she enjoyed knowing what other people thought of while she was sleeping. “When I get bored I will just go directly to social media and spend maybe thirty minutes just looking at pictures or other people’s thoughts without even realizing how much time I have already spent on social media.” Spending too much time on social media can effect the brain without knowing it. As stated in “Meet Your IBrain” by Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan, for every hour that we spend on a computer, that is at least thirty minutes of face-to-face interaction time that we lose with people (348). Gaming is a world wide activity that people from various ages like to join in on. Also, gaming has come to prove that it supports cognative abilities. Some spend days just playing games trying to defeat it but as stated by Vorgan and Small in an investigation, it is on average that a person spends about fifty minutes playing video games daily. Before technology, people would actually have to go outside and experience the action that they now turn to video games for to enjoy. A freshman student from Tarleton State University said that he spends so much time playing video games that he usually does not go outside to just enjoy the outdoors like he used to when he was a kid. So the parts of their brains that they used to use for real-life instances is not as strong as the parts of their brains that is used to help them fulfill the game. Small and Vorgan claim that “The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is involved in our ability to make decisions and integrate complex information” (351). This part of a gamers mind helps them remember movements that they have to use in order to complete the game. Some may even say that gaming actually helps them create quicker reaction times because they have to be able to think quickly while they are playing their game, Small and Vorgan claimed “We can learn to react more quickly to visual stimuli and improve many forms of attention, particularly the ability to notice images in our peripheral vision” (353).
However, being cooped up playing games continuously does not help a person in a real world situation because it only gives them an artificial sense of life. They are actually pertaining information for an alternate world, so they are not actually retaining any information that could help them in real world instances. Of course one can not blame gaming for a person’s laziness or the lack of interest in their future, but it is only a common factor for many people all around the world. Our nation needs to start understanding that the amount of time that we spend on the internet playing games or connecting to others on social media is going to dismiss a lot of abilities that actually help us in our daily lives that will affect the future of our nation. It is important to actually make time to have conversations face-to-face with people because social skills are what make our nation one of the best. Nations that lack social skills are easily dismissed as weak which results in a poor economy. If our economy is not doing well right now, it will continue to decline as our interest in our computer screens inclines. This nation is advancing with the help of technology, however abusing the technology by spending our lives on it is going to destroy our society. Not only by ignoring the facts of how it changes the use of our brains but also how we ignore the shape of our nation. There is no “its good” or “its bad” because there are many positive and negative factors of technology that can be debated all day. Although, there are a few small changes that need to be made in our time that we spend on technology because as time goes on, the time spent on technology will undoubtedly increase.