By Logan Dombrowski
Senior, Amherst High School

We live in a world that is constantly advancing in the technological industry.

Mesmerized by our phones and other technology, a lot of people don’t know how to react without having them with them at all times. Whether it’s liking the latest Instagram post, sending out a tweet, or talking with your friends in a group chat. It seems our phones always have something new to offer us. Technology drives a lot of major positive changes in our country, but there are also some negative effects of technology.

One negative impact of technology is how our phones can sometimes block out the outside world and cause us to lose human contact. We have started to isolate ourselves and sometimes would rather talk to people using our phones rather than having that face-to-face engagement. Some people feel more comfortable sending a text rather than talking to somebody in real life.

It’s not good to only communicate with somebody online because we need that human contact.

Smartphones have really started to hinder the way that we go about living our lives and how we converse with one another. We have started to lose the ability to have deeper conversations with one another and it’s changing the way we socially interact in alarming ways. Also, we start to lose concentration very easily. The constant use of so much modern technology is not good for our brains. As we start to lose concentration, productivity, and the way we think. Instead of actually using our brains to think, we just Google it instead of thinking for our own.

A lot of people would say that we are not dependent on technology, but more or less addicted to it. Some people when having their phone taken away start to become nervous and restless and even showed some symptoms of people going through detox from doing drugs. Most industrialized countries have started experiencing this.

It has even started to hinder the way that we drive from place to place, given the fact that most people when they see their screen light up instantly want to respond to the other person. 1 out of every 4 car accidents are due to distracted drivers looking at their phone.

I also believe that the younger generations will start being affected way more than the rest of the population by this due to the fact that most little kids growing up start to play on phones and tablets. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, per se, because there are apps that allow children to use their brains and help them to become smarter. It’s also making them not want to go outside more and use their imaginations to have fun.

I really do believe that people have started to become zombies of technology. Abhijit Naskar says “Live with technology, not through technology” and I honestly have to agree with him. So try and allow for those great moments in life and try to have those spontaneous conversations with one another. It’s about time that we started to learn that we as a human race should slow down and enjoy the pace of a conversation.